


The Problem of Induction

by EG17



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Arcade, Charles POV, Charles Xavier - Freeform, Charles in a Wheelchair, Cherik - Freeform, Emma Frost - Freeform, Erik Lehnsherr - Freeform, First person Charles, Hank McCoy - Freeform, Logan Howlett - Freeform, M/M, Miss Locke - Freeform, Mr. Chambers, Murderworld, Mystique - Freeform, POV Charles, Post-X-Men: Days of Future Past, Raven - Freeform, Serum, Westchester, Wolverine - Freeform, X Mansion, X-Men Apocalypse, X-Men References, X-Men: Days of Future Past Fix-it, X-men - Freeform, X-men First Class, days of future past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-06 19:59:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1870488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EG17/pseuds/EG17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Induction (n): Presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (for example, that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold). <br/>      ex) 1. Charles Xavier is forever destined to be a broken loser because all earlier events leading up to this point greatly induce that fact and 2. Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier will always hate each other because the past ten years of enmity between the two suggest perpetual hatred. </p><p>But surely you remember the future isn't set in stone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I can’t believe the bullshit that’s spewing out of my mouth. I can’t believe myself as I pace back and forth on my own two legs in front of a dry, cracked chalkboard, speaking to a room of vacantly bored students.

               “The theory of induction, as first articulated by David Hume, states that things rest in a paradoxically perpetual state of ephemerality.”

               I drop that bomb and squint out into the room to see if anyone even moved.

               I fear that some of them have died in their seats and everyone is too immobilized by boredom to bring it to my attention.

               Hank thought it would help. I’d jumped back onto the serum a mere week after seeing Raven—Mystique—off yet again after the White House fiasco. I’m weak. Depressed. Powerless.

               Worst of all, bored.

               I have a strong belief that boredom is the vice which induces all of the others.

               In that case, _he_ must be very, very bored. Idiot.

               So, much to my dismay, Hank sent a letter to the board at Oxford, asking if their most prestigious alumni could find a job teaching a mellow class to some troubled students for half a semester. He’s lucky I was still getting used to my legs again after sacrificing them for our future’s behalf, and was only able to give him a black eye rather than a full-on beating.

               Not that I would have. Not to Hank. Not to the last person left, not to the last one I can’t afford to lose.

               I think I did it for his sake more than mine. I’m sure I was driving him nuts, drilling him with books and trying to shove knowledge down his throat, spewing my own theories as I laid on the couch continually knocking over chess pieces just for him to pick up because he thought it was therapeutic for me. He became rather aloof after the black eye incident and would barely talk to me until I agreed to teach.

               So here I am, Professor X after all, teaching my least favorite class to the troublemakers, the misfits, the misguided.

               My people.

I feel a strong connection to them but the glossy-eyed stares tell me perhaps it isn’t mutual. I try again.

               “He believed that just because a certain fact was true in the present did not mean that same fact would be true the next day. For example, Josh is asleep on his desk now, and has been the past three classes.”

               I get a few taken aback chuckles. Believe it or not, kids, I can be funny. I can smile, when I want. Philosophy doesn’t happen to be one of my favorites, that’s all. I’m just a lonely and broken bitter man, that’s all.

               “For some reason we get into this mindset that because Josh has been sleeping through the last three classes and we observe him sleeping now—” I wait for him to wake, but bless him, the kid keeps going—“we believe that he’ll sleep through the next class. Why would that be so? The probability doesn’t change from day to day that he’ll fall asleep during my class, but here we make that assumption. Hume didn’t believe in that.”

               I stumble over my next few words out of surprise when I notice someone shoot their hand into the air. Unprecedented.

               “Yes?”

               “Didn’t he make an analogy about emeralds, or something? Like, it’s true that all _observed_ emeralds are green, but it can’t be true that all emeralds are green.”

               I grin at her in silent gratitude. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Good to know someone’s used their textbook for something other than a pillow like Josh here.” I look up at the clock. Noon.

               “Alright, I want that three-page response we discussed last class to be on my desk at the beginning of next class tomorrow. Have a good day.”

               The kids start packing up when someone from the back of the room shouts, “Professor, just because you expect an essay from us today doesn’t necessarily mean you’d expect it from us tomorrow, right?”

               I can’t help it. A more than reluctant grin splits across my face. I squint into the crowd of bobbing heads before I spot a boy walking to the front of the room, shouldering his backpack. He shoots me a wicked grin before sticking out his hand.

               “Alex,” he says.

               My heart leaps into my throat. “S-sorry?”

               “Alec. It’s nice to actually meet you, you being famous and all.”

               Alec. _Alec._

               “Sorry for shouting out. I figured you needed a laugh.” He looks at me worriedly, wondering if he’s gone too far and if I’ll snap. I’m not staring at him because I’m angry but because his spiked blonde hair and cocky disposition feel like a slap across the face. Right before his grin fades I shake myself out of it.

               “Nice to meet you, Alec. I’m happy to know someone was paying attention.”

               “Well, it’s not just me, it’s also that nerd Alicia.” He raises his voice as the girl who raised her hand earlier walks by. She smiles knowingly before backtracking and sticks out her hand, too.

               “It’s an honor to meet you, Doctor Xavier.”

               It shouldn’t be an honor. Nothing about me is honorable. I doubt they understand what a painful reminder it is to even stand on my own two feet, to look at anyone who even closely resembles the people I lost.

               “Oh, thank you, nothing, ah, nothing too special. I started off just like you kids. Hang in there and you may just befriend a neurotic megalomaniac and get wrapped up in a famous historical crisis.”

               I meant it as a joke. It comes out fiery and venomous. I add in forced laughter, but I see that I’ve lost them.

               “Well, let’s hope not. See you tomorrow, sir. Essay and everything.” Alec winks at Alicia and I watch as they walk out of the room, bumping into each other as their fingers slip fluidly together. I smile despite myself.

               The theory of induction.

               I feel like there’s a metaphor in there somewhere but I can’t seem to find it.

***

               Hank’s car isn’t there when I pull into the garage. My heart sinks when I open the door and a sheet of silence welcomes me. I’d get a dog, but it’d probably run away within the week. God knows everything else does.

               I kick my shoes off and walk into the kitchen. This is when the boredom kicks in. I already graded all the papers this morning at around two a.m. when I couldn’t sleep. I’d already read for four hours and brushed up on any philosophy I’d forgotten. There isn’t much good on television. Hank isn’t home.

               It’s empty. Quiet. Boring.

               I need a life.

               I stare at the refrigerator trying to decide if I’m hungry because I’ve got nothing better to be or if I actually am hungry. I’m tracing back to the last time I ate when I catch my own reflection in the chrome design.

               I look like one of Jack the Ripper’s victims. After he’s been through with them.

               Perhaps a haircut is in order.

***

               “Jesus Christ,” Hank blurts as he staggers through the door with bags of groceries, kicking the door shut behind him. It slams a bit too harshly. He keeps staring at me.

               “Not anymore.” I manage a smile and ruffle my hands through my clean cut hair, easing a small chuckle out of Hank. I grab some bags from him and set them on the counter.

“It…it makes you look sharp. It’s good. I like it much better when you don’t look like the offspring of the Virgin Mary.”

               Something dawns on me. “I could’ve went out and got food. You’re the one that actually has things to do, Hank.” I glare at him.

               He, too, is at Oxford, following the very path that I took myself about ten years ago. That boy is going somewhere. I’m not, not really. Not at the moment.

               He looks ashamed. “Food is a necessity. Class isn’t.” My neck snaps up and I catch his gaze. Hank flinches despite being on the opposite side of the counter, and the look in his eyes sends me reeling. “I-I know, you wouldn’t want me to skip, but I wasn’t sure when you’d get back from teaching, and I’m already at top marks. Not that you asked, I just…it’s not that bad if I skipped.” He gulps, nervously tracing the label on the box of our favorite cereal.

               It disgusts me. And by ‘it,’ I mean me, not the cereal. My empathy seems to have drained along with my powers, replaced by selfishness and self-pity.

               I watch him now, too closely, as he starts to put things away, eyeing me carefully, still waiting to see if I’ll have another one of my berserk rages he’s become so accustomed to. My mouth runs dry. I see the way his hands tremble, the pen smudges on his left hand from writing furiously, the fatigue written beneath his eyes from nights spent awake, doing…what? How didn’t I know? There are two of us in the house and I couldn’t even get out of my own mind once everyone had left to pay attention to the one person who had stayed.

               “Why did you stay?” I blurt.

               Our first direct conversation on both Cuba and Washington and I make the question about me. Perfection.

               “Never mind, never mind. I’ll put these away, go get some rest, or do whatever work you need to do. Just, please. Let me do these kinds of things next time. I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house.” I choke around the words with more forced laughter.

               I put everything away, pretending to ignore the fact he still stands there, looming in the corner, watching me like I had just watched him. What does he see? A burden? A sad old man? Finally I turn and stick out my hand, gesturing for him to hand me the container of strawberries.

               He clutches them like his life depends on it.

               “Hank?”

               He waits until I meet his gaze. “I’m allergic,” he blurts.

               “To…” I check to see if he’s serious. “To strawberries?” He nods, then drops his gaze. I don’t miss a beat.

               “I hate them.”

               He looks back up, the ghost of a smile playing across his lips. Something unfamiliar starts to rise in my chest.

               “Hank, we’ve been buying these on a weekly basis for the past ten years, and what, we’ve just been waiting until they rot and then we throw them out and buy them again the next week?”

               Hank suddenly beams at me, and that’s when I realize he’s seen it on my face before I’ve even realized it. I’m smiling from ear to ear, laughter pouring out of my mouth. Soon we’re doubled over with silent laughter, the one that makes you forget all your other aches and pains because it splits your side in half.

               We draw up, almost composed, before catching each other’s watery eyes and doubling over all over again. After a good minute, we’ve straightened up, both of us staring down at the problematic berries.

               “She…she loved them,” he says. I’d almost said the same thing, but he said it first. I wonder how many similar thoughts we’ve shared over the past decade.

I nod, my euphoria quickly slipping away. My smile’s gone, but the dark kitchen no longer seems as menacing.

               “I think,” Hank says quietly, his words getting caught on his tongue. He sniffs, leaning up against the counter like we’re having a casual conversation. His boyish hair falls over his glasses, but he leaves it there. “I think that’s why I stayed. Because you love her, too. And you’re better than them, the whole damn bunch.”

               There’s silence. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt for a second before noticing a knowing smirk creep up on his features.

               “Did you just quote _The Great Gatsby_?”

               Hank shrugs. “I missed an English class today.”

               I suddenly rip the strawberries out of his hands, and to my satisfaction he leaps backward. “That won’t be happening again, yeah?” He nods fervently and traces my movements as I chuck the strawberries into the garbage can.

               “Fuck those strawberries.”

               Hank mouths those very words back as he stares at the ground like it holds a profound message on the metaphorical presence of strawberries in the world.

               He looks up at me and I look back. I feel like I haven’t looked at him, not really, for a long time.

               “Ten years,” he says.

               “Ten years.”

               He looks up, and I know that it’s enough for now. He slinks out of the room in the way that he does and I look down at the strawberry juice splattered on the counter, shining like blood after a homicide.

               I’m kidding, what a stupid metaphor. It’s fucking strawberry juice.

               But that theory of induction. I’ll get it one day. So close I can hardly fail to grasp it.

               Yeah, that was a Gatsby quote, too.

               I’ve got to fill this head with something, after all.

              


	2. Chapter 2

“Charles, someone…someone is at the door.”

               I try not to act too interested but I’m up off the couch in an instant, crossing the room as quickly as possible before positioning myself inches from Hank in the dark hallway. Who would visit at nearly midnight in the middle of the week?

               Who would visit at all?

               “No worries. I’ll get it.”

               A stream of “no’s” spews incessantly out of my mouth until it devolves into an unintelligible whisper and I place my hand on his chest to stop him. “No, no. The last time you opened that door…”

               He almost rolls his eyes but catches himself. “Yeah, Logan, time travel, Eri—”

               I hiss out both my lungs’ worth of breath and he turns his words into coughing. “Alright, no door, no door.”

               The knocking becomes more incessant. “Just ignore it. Go to bed, Hank, don’t you have an early class tomorrow?”

               “You’re one to talk, your class starts at, what, nine?”

               I brush him off and return to the couch with my books and my tea.

               Normally the knocking would filter through my mind as I once trained to focus only on important things, but that was an old habit, and it’s hard to tear myself away from the noise. This house is quiet most of the time.

               I stand and straighten myself up to head up to my room when I’m frozen in my tracks by a carefully orchestrated knock, one that reverberates through my skull in a way it hasn’t for many, many years.

               Raven.

               But it’s not Raven standing on the other side of that door.

               _Mystique._

And she calls me pretentious. Honestly.

               “I’ll get it,” Hank says hurriedly, already reaching for the doorknob, the light of recognition gleaming in his eyes. I growl in opposition a little too roughly and he backs off, shooting me a worried look. I pause before the door and our gazes rest heavy on the doorknob.

               “Charles, you…”

               I don’t say anything, already having made my decision between choosing my words carefully or just ripping the door open with unspoken resolve and trying to remain my composure. I yank open the door, glaring out into the night.

               The blonde-haired girl I had been hoping for was not standing there, nor the blue woman I had expected.

               “Logan?” My anger immediately floods out of me as utter confusion takes its place. “Is-is that you?”

               A gruff man with dark hair stuck up on the sides greets me with an eyebrow raise. “Think so. Though honestly, I’m starting to question that myself. Mind if I come in?” He sticks his foot in the doorway though I’m too shocked to close it on him.

               “I mean, how could it be you, no one knows that knock except for—”

               “Me. Hey, Charles.”

               I find her yellow-eyed gaze quickly despite the dark as she slips smoothly into the foyer. A thousand words slip through my mind and onto the back of my tongue, apologies, diatribes, blinding fury, but I swallow all of them, instinctive sibling annoyance taking precedence.

               “It’s Professor X, actually,” I say in an American accent, slamming the door shut with a sardonic flourish of my hand. I turn my back on our guests before I can even see the hurt on Raven’s face, but the door swings back open and slaps me on the back.

               I whip back around, and Logan and Raven watch me carefully, like I’m about to shatter.

               “What?!” I yell.

               “Save your voice, Charles.” My jaw shuts as my blood runs cold. “You should thank them, they’re the ones that insisted on this…emotional triage, if you will,” a bored voice drawls from the shadows.

               My back pounds from where the doorknob hit it. Hysteria creeps up in my throat and I nearly burst out into a pool of tears and laughter. In fact, I’m extremely close, before I realize if I’m not able to control everyone else’s emotions I must, in the very least, be able to control my own.

               Someone shifts out of the shadows and I stare, dumbfounded, into the cool blue eyes of none other than Erik bloody Lehnsherr.

               He looks everywhere in the room but at me, distant amusement playing out on his face like he’s never walked these very halls as my best friend, like he doesn’t remember everything we shared in this home that’s brought me so much pain and so much joy.

               While I had a clever response for Raven my wit died in the face of Erik.

               “You hurt my back,” I blurt like an idiot.

               Erik looks at me and I can tell he’s trying to figure out if I’m joking or not. I watch multiple emotions dance across his face.

               I’ve taken special care as of late to take note of body language. It’s incredible what you pick up when you’re telepathic abilities are ripped from you.

               Rather, when you choose to have them ripped away.

               I can’t even tell if I’m joking or not. Do I want to be joking? No, no. This man’s took everything that matters to me. He belongs in prison. I should turn him in this very moment. He’s hurt me, he’s hurt the people I love. He took my love and cast it away like the missiles on the beach that day, ten years ago. I want to scream at him, to kick him with the legs I’ve sacrificed everything for, to tear that stupid smirk off his face and rip his soft curls off his forehead and slam the doorknob into his back until he’s paralyzed and have everyone in the room walk away from him and see how he feels, see how he feels when he’s actually forced into something resembling empathy. I want—I could—do so many things to him.

               But something keeps me frozen in place, silent. Letting him decide if it was a joke or not.

                The silence becomes quite awkward as we all decide whether to get at each other’s throats or offer each other a cup of something.

               “We sent Logan in first because we figured you hated him the least,” Raven says after a while. I can’t bring myself to look at her again, not in this house, not when she’s not…Raven. “Kind of funny, when you think about it.”

               “Terribly so,” I mutter.

               My mind is whirring. I can’t decide what to do, and that’s when I realize I don’t have to. Without another word I turn on my heels and walk out of the foyer and hide in the kitchen, taking the deepest breath I have in the past five minutes.

               I hear Hank making small talk. Damn that boy. He can’t stick up for himself to save his life.

               I phrased that poorly. You know what I mean.

               “Charles, come on. We need to talk.” I leap out of my skin at the break of silence and whip around. “I wouldn’t have come home—I mean, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t have to. I mean, you aren’t hard to find, though. You should probably change that. People are looking for you.”

               “Can’t imagine why,” I spit at her. “Good thing you two visiting will reduce speculation.”

               She sighs with her entire body and despite the fact I feel like I don’t know her it’s such a familiar movement I nearly lose the last shred of my resolve. I look away as my heart pounds at the back of my throat, sending an ache through my whole body.

               “Come on. I know, I get it—okay, okay. I don’t get it, but I’m willing to listen. We’re both willing to listen. There’s a problem, and we just need to lay low here for a while—”

               “Lay low? For a while? A problem?!”

               She narrows her eyes. “Yes, that’s what I said, try to keep up. Just because your legs are gone doesn’t mean your brain—”

               “Right, so you’ve got a problem, you’ve come to my house—”

               “Our house.”

               “ _My_ house, and you expect Hank and I to solve not just _your_ problem but that psychopathic FBI’s Most Wanted prick’s problem too? No. Hell, no. Get out.”

               “It’s not my problem, or his problem. It’s our problem. That’s why you’re involved. You realize him and I ran around solving our own problems for a while together? I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important. If it weren’t something the old Charles would want to fix.”

               Old Charles.

               “Old Charles? Oh, so we’re talking about my pre-Professor X glory days?”

               “Oh, for fuck’s sake, forget it. Last resort. Magne—Erik?” she calls, glaring at me.

               I turn my back to her and lean against the sink, staring out into the night as if the stars could provide me any comfort. Despite my lack of powers his presence is unmistakable. I feel it the moment he steps into the room. I can picture the condescending glare centered right on my back and it makes me cringe enough that I turn back around, unsettled.

               “Am I always last resort?” He smiles at Raven, reaching out to gently touch her arm.

               I don’t like the way he looks at her.

               I clear my throat. “No, actually, I’ve been looking for someone to fix the fridge for months, you’d be my first resort for that,” I point out.

               Again, he stares like he’s waiting for me to laugh, or to follow up with, “I’m only joking.”

               Again, everything gets stuck in my throat and I just stare back.

               “Is anyone hungry?” Hank tries. Logan raises his hand. Hank brings Logan over and the two of them rifle around in the offending fridge as everyone watches. Each second becomes more painful than the last.

               “Erik?”

               Erik winces like the name is painful, just like Raven says it like it tastes sour on her tongue.

               “Do you have anything to say to Charles to convince him of the magnitude of our problem? How we so _humbly_ submit ourselves to his willingness to help?”

               It all sounds so sarcastic, so scripted, and their knowing, matter-of-fact exchanged glances make me want to hurl buckets of strawberries at both their heads.

               Her words run through my head as Erik licks his lips, his demonic mind no doubt searching for words that will slice through me as cleanly as his actions once had.

               _We sent Logan in first because we figured you hated him the least._

               She thinks I hate her.

               I swallow hard, feeling heavier with every thought.

               At least, I realize, that means Erik knows I hate him, too. He’s just dragged in Raven as collateral damage.

               “You’re wrong,” I say to no one in particular. “I don’t hate Logan at all. I owe him plenty, and he’s informed me that in the future we become good friends. I believe him.”

               Logan chokes on the spoonful of ice cream he has in his mouth. “Uh, thanks…thanks, Chuck,” he manages around the mouthful. I feel like choking myself. Raven and Erik giggle to themselves like little schoolgirls sharing a joke.

               “Because Magneto and Mystique are such sophisticated nicknames!” I snap. Now I feel like a child. I mentally kick myself, urging myself not to stoop to their level.

               At least it shut them up pretty well. Erik stands stiffly and the contrast with my memory sticks another knife in my chest. I remember how he used to stretch languidly against the counter, smirking at me comfortably from across the room as I tried to read him some of the paper in the morning, finding it difficult to focus as his lean figure swept about the kitchen, making me more tea the way he’d memorized that I’d like it, humming to himself along the way.

               But he stood as stiff as one of the cupboards in the kitchen, like he himself was made of cold metal from the inside out.

               I wonder if Hank could just make me a serum that simply stopped me from thinking for a couple of minutes, just to bring me some peace and serenity and spare me a couple moments of crippling pain.

               But if I didn’t think for a couple minutes, all instinctive movements would stop, like breathing, blinking, standing. I’d collapse with watery eyes and start to die of asphyxiation, all in one fell swoop, but perhaps die of cardiac arrest earlier, if not a brain contusion…

               God, d’you see what I mean? Just a couple seconds of peace.

               As if to rub it in, Erik opens his goddamn mouth. “There’s no doubt that there’s many things you’d like to hear from me and Mystique.”

               “Mystique and I,” I say coolly. _Raven and I_ , I almost whisper, the warm words wrapping around my thoughts.

               I almost get a laugh from him. Almost. Not that I’m trying.

               “You’re standing on your own two feet but you really don’t change, do you, Charles?”

               I don’t know if he wants an answer or not. I stare back, trying to remain emotionless. Hank and Logan absent-mindedly retreat further and further away from the conversation. I’d like to move with them.

               “But I’m not going to apologize on behalf of what I’ve tried to do. What we’ve tried to do. I know we have different ideals, but…”

               Something must have changed in my expression, because he trails off like he knows he’s doing the verbal equivalent of stabbing knives into my back and turning them one by one. Good, the bastard’s finally learning some social skills.

               But he still talks like a robot, like he’s memorized all this. Like that’s what it takes to talk to me.

               “I apologize for hurting you. I regret it every day. I never meant for you, of all people, to get hurt. And—”

               “Stop.”

               Me, of all people. What’s that mean?

               “Forget it. What’s the problem?” I fight to keep my voice steady, like that’s what it takes to talk to them. My sister and my closest friend. What used to be my sister and my closest friend.

               Erik looks affronted but relieved. I can only imagine what’s running through his head. _Oh, phew, he stopped me. God forbid I have to make a proper apology._

“Well, first of all, Emma Frost sends her regards.” I haven’t heard that name in ten years. It takes me a minute to recall that annoyingly pretty face of hers.

               “No, she doesn’t. She would have told me herself.” I tap my forehead. Erik clamps his mouth shut for a split second but doesn’t let on that he’s lost some of his footing. I read through it. It’s nice being a telepath without being a telepath.

               He smiles knowingly and I want to get that smile off his face somehow. A few thoughts cross my mind but I focus on a mental image of me punching him on that chiseled jaw of his.

               “We’ve heard from multiple sources, mainly Emma, that large amounts of mutants are dropping off the radar suddenly. They’re gone. Now, if the military or Trask’s program were involved, we’d know because of their close affiliation with the government and everyone’s eagerness to publicize mass genocide of mutants.”

               He checks to see if I’m following, like I’m the slowest person in the room just because I can walk now, but I actually have to close my eyes for a moment to recover from reeling at his proclivity for dramatically describing everything. I open my eyes after a minute and nod.

               “Me and…” The ghost of a smile traces his lips. “Mystique and I have been poking around, looking for more, but unfortunately we haven’t found much. I don’t believe large groups of us are going missing for a good reason, and until we can find a source for these disappearances I think we need to treat this seriously. And I think you can help us.”

               I understand before I even blink next. “Yeah, find mutants. Nope. Legs, remember? I don’t sober up for Erik Lehnsherr.”

               “What about me?”

               I whirl on Raven. “What about you? You’re just as bad as him, as far as I’m concerned.”

               My words hurt her, and I can see they’re unexpected. I watch the pain cross her eyes, can hear her thinking that I have changed, after all. Her little darling Xavier, so quick to be innocent and so easily hurt.

               I don’t mean to whisper them out loud but her old words come spilling out of my mouth, trickling out like the tears down my cheeks.

               “No matter how bad the world gets, you’ll never be against it.” I look them both in the eyes, hard. “Not anymore.”

               I turn my back on them, reveling in it, reveling in the way that it’s I that now walks away from them as they ask for help. “Thanks for that.”

               I walk away now like I’ve always dreamed of doing.

               Like I never could on that beach.

               But it doesn’t feel as good as I’d imagined. My legs feel heavy. Her gaze has left me, disappointed, no doubt latching onto Hank’s in hopes for some sense of salvageable affection.

               But his stays. Heavy, like metal.

               It follows me all the way up to my room and presses down on my chest as I lay awake in bed. I wait for it to crush me until my world goes black.

               But I can’t sleep tonight, not with strangers in my house. No, worse than strangers. The ghosts of two people I once loved, who once loved me enough not to hurt me, join the path of my father, my mother, my stepbrother, my stepfather. In that case, the house should seem filled.

               It’s never seemed so empty.


	3. Chapter 3

“Charles,” someone says, and I bolt upright, tearing myself out of the dream. But I hear it again. “Charles!”

               I rub my eyes and squint into the darkness, my eyes scrambling to make sense of the dark contours in my otherwise familiar bedroom. A silhouette stands immobilized in front of me, and I jerk backward. “Charles,” the silhouette says.

               “Erik? What the hell are you…”

               Erik’s lithe figure suddenly shrinks in on itself until a more familiar form fills my room and I try to get my heart to stop pounding. Raven turns on the light, and I find it almost funny that I’m more taken aback to see her in her blonde-haired form than her natural one.

               I almost don’t like it.

               Almost.

               But I force myself to not like it. I force myself to find her blonde form deceitful, shameful, one that I can’t look at. I cast my vapid stare onto the sheets in front of me. “Please…” I choke. “Please change.”

               Her response is expected and immediate. “Oh, Christ, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’ll forgive you for saying that but only because I owe you one after bursting in here uninvited.”

               I can’t help it. I slowly turn my head, allowing myself to gaze at her fingers worrying each other nervously. I don’t want her to be nervous. My gaze suddenly snaps back up to her face, and the pain becomes too strong. I don’t want her to change, but I can’t stand seeing the old Raven. She’s a ghost to me now.

               “I know you prefer this. So I’ll just stick with it. It doesn’t really bother me.”

               Yes it does.

               “Alright,” I say slowly.

               “I was just messing with you.” I stare at her. “When I came in as Erik. I just…you know, I thought you wanted a laugh. You can still do that, right? Laugh? Feel joy?”

               I grin down into my own hands, matching her battle of wits immediately. “No, actually, I’ve just finished a thesis on how there’s a direct correlation between one’s ability to walk and their inability to retain a sense of humor.”

               Her laughter swallows her half-hearted disapproval of my nerdy audacity as she chucks a pillow at my head. I let it hit me and as I rear back to throw it back at her, I catch her staring at her own reflection in my mirror. The moment is gone. I let the pillow fall to the ground, and go back to picking at the fraying fibers on the bed sheets.

               “What, uh…” She swallows hard. “What have you been up to?”

               “Er, you know. The usual.” Drinking excessively. Irritating the shit out of Hank. Being a shitty human being—mutant—in general. I swallow, hard. “I went back to teaching. Philosophy, ironically.” I catch her bemused stare. “Yeah, I know, I hated it in college. But it’s alright. The students seem interested enough and it gives me something.” That sounded lame. “Something to do, I mean.”

               No, it gives me something. A sense of purpose. Barely, but still.    

               She nods her approval. “Good, good for you, Charlie.” I wince, and she grins. My heart melts at the sight of it, spilling down my ribcage and filling some of the gaping holes deep within me but leaving an even larger hole in my chest.

               “You should get a dog,” she pipes up suddenly, gazing around the room like she expected a bunch of mangy cats to come spilling out.

               “What, so no one thinks I’m a crazy old cat lady?” We laugh.

               “Something like that, yeah.” She moves so she’s sitting fully on my bed now, one of her legs tucked under the other, and that’s when I notice she’s wearing a pair of my sweatpants with one of my favorite collared shirts I picked up at Oxford. Plain navy blue, and she looks so beautiful.

               A disgusting wave of heat pounds through me as I realize I might as well be complimenting the clothes she’s wearing. Fake Raven looks so beautiful.

               Is that all we ever love about someone? The memories from long ago that we so closely associate them until any sort of noticeable change seems negative, even if it’s not?

               She catches me staring, and blushes. “Sorry. I thought you wouldn’t mind. I can change, if you…”

               “I don’t. Mind, I mean.”

               The gentle summer breeze blows through the room. She wraps her arms around herself and I remember us sitting this very same way as ten year olds, trying to figure the world out for ourselves.

               She stares at my sock like it holds the answer. “Well, goodnight, Charles.” I watch her body language careful. She leans forward, as if to hug, to kiss, to push me away, I’ll never know. Leaning back she disguises any intimate movement as a shudder and quickly slips off the bed and rushes to the doorway, stopping once her back is turned.          

               “That’s it? A goodnight? No bribes or begging or gentle persuasion?”

               She turns back, and her eyes are sad, so sad, I suddenly wonder what they’ve seen in the time she’s changed.

               “It gets tiring, hurting you. Just a goodnight this time, that’s all I wanted to say. I hope you’ll take it.”

               She starts out of the room, but slowly, enough so that she can hear me when I say a quiet goodnight and she turns her head ever so slightly that I can see a warm smile spreading across her rosy cheeks as they turn peachy into deep, deep blue, the kind I’d quicker associate with my Oxford polo shirts than my own sister.

               I flop back onto my bed, disgust at myself roiling in my stomach, wondering how if I can’t even fall asleep with myself how could I ever plan to live with myself?

               The night breeze starts to slowly brush my door close when it suddenly slams back open. Logan strolls in stiffly. “Raven, go to bed, stop playing games. I’m not angry with…”

               Logan-Raven spots me on the bed, mutters an expletive, and stumbles quickly back out the door. I bolt upward and off the bed. For the second time that night I’m shocked to see Logan. “Oh, it’s really you.”

               Logan’s standing halfway into my room, half out, staring down the hallway trying to act nonchalant, muttering confirmations that it’s indeed him. I half want to joke with him to make him feel more comfortable, but I can only imagine how he feels. The courage it must have taken him not just to team up with the asshole and his sidekick but to walk into this room right now. To find the person who eventually mentors him, who he’s already met in his better form, and find him broken and useless. I realize I have nothing to say. He finally turns to me, and I offer a smile that he weakly returns, but returns nonetheless.

               Empathy isn’t too hard, I decide, even without a mental rapport.

               Well, easy for me. Some other people seem to have some trouble.

               “You, um. You…you want to talk, somewhere?” he asks gruffly, like he’ll lose his masculinity just by having a relatively emotional conversation with a young man wearing a sweater over a white collared shirt.

               _Have you seen me and Erik?_ I want to say with a crooked grin, because that’s what Erik would say, that’s how Erik would smile. But I decide against it, because Logan hasn’t seen young Erik and I. He’s just seen Professor X and Magneto.

               Suddenly I want to plop him down and have him tell me everything, from the way I am in the future to the way he is, to the school, to the way Erik and I look at each other when we stand in the vicinity of each other, to the way Raven carries herself when she walks into a room.

               But I also don’t.

               “Sure, we can go to my office.”

               I start out the doorway only to find Logan is already halfway down the hallway headed toward my study as if he knows the way. I stop in my tracks when I realize he does.

               I’ve seen some weird shit in my day and I’m only thirty-four but I’m not sure I’ll ever get over this.

               When I arrive he’s already seated in a chair, sitting in a way that seems so familiar to him. I watch him carefully as he stares at the chair across the desk as if waiting for me to materialize, not even bothering to take in his surroundings, because they’re probably quite similar to what he already knows. I sit down across from him, fascinated.

               “Why are you staring?”

               “Because you knew the way to my office without me ever having told you. You sit in this room like you have thousands of times. You can barely meet my gaze but I’m guessing my eyes are the only familiar thing to you.”

               He shakes his head, making it almost imperceptible. “Your eyes look different. They’ve got a lot of pain. When you’re older, they’ve got this look like you’ve seen the whole world. I dunno, maybe you have, Prof.” As soon as the words leave his mouth he looks down, embarrassed.

               I can’t help grinning at him, only imagining what he’s seen, conversations we’ve had. Suddenly I’m almost giddy, and I feel like a small child asking questions.

               “What am I like?” His mouth opens and closes as he opens his jaw, confused as to where to start. “Does this room look similar, or do I change it? What about Erik?”

               I lean forward, forgetting everything. “Who gets gray hair first?”

               Logan actually looks me full on for the first time, disbelief reaching his eyes before unadulterated glee spreads across his face. His laughter starts slowly and the next thing I know he’s nearly slipping off his chair in hysteria. His hands cover his face as he cackles. I’m confused at first but his laughter is so rare it’s contagious and soon I’m laughing as well.

               He finally composes himself, and begins to speak, but his words get lost in another onslaught of laughter. I’m still smiling but definitely lost, and something itches at the back of my mind as it throbs with hunger, frustration, the urge to know, the urge to just slip in…

               I push it away and my face starts to ache as I smile at Logan and he finally gains composure. Between gasps of laughter he blurts, “Jesus Christ, you go bald!”  
               I first note the juxtaposition of words and as I recall my earlier conversation with Hank I chuckle before the words hit me full force and the smile slips off my face.

               “Bloody hell. You’re joking.”

               Logan shakes his head, tears streaming down his face. I don’t even bother to wonder the last time he’s laughed that hard.

               I fling myself out of my chair, my legs momentarily failing me in a way that makes my heart skip a beat, and I trip over the couch and I’m across the room, staring into the glass cabinet containing my mother’s collection of rare china Raven and I used to eat out of when we were feeling particularly lonely and pretentious. When we were feeling like me.

               Lonely and pretentious. I’d want it on a T-shirt, but I rarely wear those. God, I am pretentious.

               Enough so that, as I stare into my reflection and the horrified face staring back at me, I tear my fingers through my hair, ruffling it in its entirety, imagining myself without it. Bald, legless, lonely, and pretentious. Is that my life in the future? Oh, God, I thought I’d at least have my hair, if nothing else.

               “Bollocks,” I whisper in distress. Logan’s laughter doesn’t slow even as he registers my horror. I slink back over to my chair and mope as he gets the last of it out. I peek at him between my hands, and he nods.

               “Don’t worry. He gets gray hair pretty early on. Probably because we screwed with him so much, made him age early.”

               I moan and bury my face in my hands.

               “Calm down, Chuck. If it makes you feel better, I had no idea you’d look like you do now, as a young guy. I mean, Jesus. You’re not my type, but, hell, take what you can get out if it while you can.”

               I realize my worries are stupid in the face of everything else and I smile at Logan, glad he’s comfortable enough with my future self and the idea of my younger self that he can say something like that and only duck his head slightly in sheepishness. A blanket of silence settles thickly in the room. Not awkward but demanding.

               “Well, X, I gotta say—”

               “I’m assuming—”

               We both blurt our comments out at once. I stop as he trails off, his wild gesticulations winding down as he realizes he can’t physically grasp at words.

               “Go ahead,” I say, an odd feeling spreading through me at the sound of a new nickname. I’d heard plenty from Sean and Alex all those years ago, but ones from the future…now that’s a novelty. I don’t let on, though. I could do without Chuck and Charlie.

               “It’s a lot easier with the whole mental thing, you know.”

               I do. “It’s a lot easier with legs, actually,” I say lightly, finally managing to fight the bitterness out of my voice.

               I know we need to wait a moment for the silence to descend once again, make way for another attempt at weak words to articulate impossible ideas. His gaze rests on the chessboard in the corner, and he smiles to himself. God, I so badly want to know what he sees. But I can only guess at what I’d have to sift through.

               The words suddenly burst through him like his claws force themselves through his skin. Forcefully, like it causes him pain initially and eventually relief, a sense of security. “Your school is really successful. Kids love it there, they feel safe. Scott, even…even Jean, they’re all there. Rogue. Bobby. Well, I’m not sure how many of them you know…Beast—Hank, here, Hank’s great.” Logan laughs to himself as he shifts in his chair, foreign memories dancing across his eyes, giving his dark disposition light for a brief moment.

               “I mean, it’s got its faults, but it’s great, it’s changed the world. It got the government off our asses. You even let me teach a class, believe it or not. History. I show up to class less than half the kids, but you don’t really care, you just commend me for trying, which is so goddamn annoying but simultaneously reassuring. Who the hell doesn’t yell at you but says at least you tried? You wouldn’t believe the shit that comes out of your mouth, the shit that _doesn’t_ come out of your mouth, holy hell…”

               My heart swells. I drop any sense of self-respect and stare at him, mouth agape with joy at the coming world, a joy so different than joy one feels in the present, joy, I realize, that’s hope.

               _I need you to hope again._

The words snap through my mind violently, the implication flinging through my mind with a blur of red and black flooding my vision.

               I’m furious I let him draw me in, even for a moment. His acting job, his façade, his forced affinity for connecting with me suddenly seems so orchestrated I can only imagine that bastard whispering it to him in my kitchen—my own kitchen, the _nerve_ —late last night.

               I’m not even angry. I’m not even surprised.

               Get close to Charles Xavier. Make him happy. Make Charles Xavier feel hopeful, feel important. Make Charles Xavier love you. Make him think you love him, too. Manipulate Charles Xavier. Get what you want from him.

               Break Charles Xavier. Break him twice over.

               But I’m not even angry, or vengeful. It’s not even an act of obstinacy for Erik; I genuinely don’t have the verve to fight back.

               “You’ve met me twice over now and you still believe I’m that foolish to fall for it?” I whisper through gritted teeth. I pull myself onto my shaking legs, barely able to stand. My eyes water as every part of my begins to break. My mind melts into sorrow and I can’t think straight as my legs wobble until I can’t stand in defiance, can’t even carry myself away, can only render myself utterly useless yet again as my body and my mind falls in shambles around me.

               “Profes—Charles, come on. Those mutants need your help,” Logan begins, getting out of his chair out of pity once he notices my struggling.

               “Yeah? Maybe if I make that decision, it’ll be the one that ruins my future, Logan, you’re the one that knows how fragile time is, you of all people.” How fragile I am.

               Pain shoots through me, bullets in my spine, my legs.

“Yeah, well, you of all people know that the only thing that will ensure the future is taking your powers back. Losing your legs. Becoming who you’re supposed to be.”

I lose focus of his words. Agony in my head, unadulterated fear as the ghostly traces of words dance in the back of my mind, some of them more potent than others, the one voice I never wanted back in my head, one I never wanted to share with again, cold as everything his fingers so deftly manipulate…

               I give out a cry, more out of my heart breaking again, as if it could an infinite times more, than the pain in my legs. I clutch the desk and collapse onto the ground, tears ironically streaming down my face out of shame as Hank runs in, needle in hand, and more than two pairs of eyes bore into  me as I feel a prick of a needle, and physical relief spreads through me in the ensuing moments.

               I cannot face him. Nothing would break me more. I can only wonder at the disgust on his face. Maybe even pity. I can’t decide what I’d despise seeing more written on the rough, immutable lines in his face.

               With a sick feeling I realize I’ve got nothing on Erik Lehnsherr, nothing I used to. My family, my powers, my peacefulness, my magnanimity, my unflinching love for the world despite the hatred its shown me. All gone.

               At least he’s accepted it. I’m lying here in denial, arrogant denial that I’m still better, because all day I stand on my two legs, ghastly reminders of everything I’ve lost and everything I’m too weak to accept, while he’s out running around with far-fetched mutant supremacy ideals.

               Nothing. I’ve got nothing.

               But nothing indicates the absence of things, a phantasmagoria of white and blank pages, an apathetic and perpetually unattached state in which one is lost without their essence, their entity.

               Perhaps I’ve got everything. Too much of everything. Too much sorrow, too much loss, too much love for things gone, too much passion for lost ideals, too much love for the wrong person, too much hatred for the right person. Everything hurts too much.

               Everyone urges me to stay conscious, and I no longer feel nauseous with pain, but I black out anyway.

Because, compared to a world with everything, good and bad, a lover and an enemy, I welcome the preferred state of nothingness.

               I belong there best because I am made of everything but equate to nothing. Rudimentary algebra.

               No need to find X.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

It’s obvious, isn’t it.

               The decision’s already been made for me, was made for me before that miserable trio crossed my threshold twenty-four hours ago, before I even woke up yesterday morning. They know they don’t need to convince me, they knew they could get away with using Logan as the best worst option for a persuasion technique. Because there is no persuasion with me.

               What is it? Give me your tired, your poor…the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

               I look at the door of my room, cracked and splintered from thrusting it into the reluctantly shaped doorway. Well. It’s not a golden gate and I don’t sound like I’m a giant green female off the shore of Manhattan but send me your worthless pieces of shit, because God knows I can commiserate with them and provide them with substandard health care before shoving them into preemptively carved out racist niches.

               I need to stop this wallowing in self-pity thing.

               But, yes, the decision has already been made for me. Of course I’ll help find helpless mutants. Of course I’ll give up my goddamn legs, my brief fling with something resembling sanity. Indubitably I will pick myself up with my own hands, piece by piece, and shove my fragile body under that godforsaken helmet and sift through scream upon scream for help, shove through home after home of paternal beatings and familial exclusions, screams of “freak” and death threats, minds too beautiful to be broken at young ages. Of course I’ll ignore how hopeless it all seems and locate arbitrary groups of young mutants and figure out their problem. It’s the least I can do, after all the world has given me.

               I need to stop.

               I stare up at the ceiling, my bed a bit too big without her lying here next to me, my side a bit too cold without someone lying tight against it, strong arms pressing me into him.

               Stop.

               Stop, stop, stop.

               My throbbing head sends pulse after pulse of ache into me until I feel like I’m made of nothing but pain. I welcome it in my legs, clenching my fists and pounding them into my thighs, gritting my teeth in the satiating agony.

               Maybe the voices and their pain will stave off my own. Hopefully solving other’s problems, fixing them, might just help me, hold me up a bit.

               Or maybe I’ll fail and it’ll break me to the point where I can’t get back up.

               I stare down at my legs and watch them twitch with the urge to move. Which is stupid, legs don’t have urges. But I feel my toes curl in my socks, feel my brain pound, and I slam my head back onto the pillow as if that would satisfy my sudden masochistic urges. Ah, yes, Charles, a pillow, so painful.

               Everything can be painful if you try hard enough.

               “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I bellow before suddenly remembering that it’s not just Hank and I in my house anymore. It’s unnerving, not sensing everyone else’s presence. A sensation I cannot entirely put into words.

               I fling myself out of bed, frustrated with my bored mind that can only resort to morbid thinking and legs so desperate to give out on me they won’t let me lay still.

               I walk past Raven’s room, the door open. I hope I haven’t woken her, and I almost lean in to check, but I stop myself. I can’t.

               People’s minds are incredible. The stupid ones, too. The vegetative ones, even. So quiet. Peaceful. Others are quite scary to be in, but there’s always something deep down that grounds them to the human condition, something worth appealing to.

I laugh quietly to myself outside Raven’s room when I remember one time around the boys and Erik I’d made the flagrant mistake of saying “I love feeling up people’s minds” and I didn’t hear the end of it for a week.

But it’s true, each one, so special, so painfully alive, so biologically attuned yet emotionally driven. I wonder why people choose to waste them away, with drugs and such.

Don’t roll your eyes. Getting rid of the extra voices in my head isn’t waste, it’s sanity.

I push off the wall from Raven’s room, still edgy, and slowly walk down the hallway, fighting the painful reminders of this house out of my mind and trying to fill them with memories from ten years ago.

Maybe people don’t understand the value of their own minds. I s’pose that’s why people waste them away.

Screw philosophy, I’m turning to psychology.

Between fatigue and anxiety I fall into a stupor and the next thing I know I’m wearing Hank’s Oxford sweatshirt, my feet pounding on the brick curving snugly against the exterior of the mansion, breaking only for random spurts of dying vegetation. I smile fondly at the dandelions growing through the cracks. I welcome any form of rebellion in this house as much as possible.

After what feels like an hour I draw to a stop down at the dock overlooking the pond that I built with my father when I was very young. It’s too painful to look down at what’s holding my legs, how my legs are barely holding me, so I cast a glance up at the sky, my father’s voice tickling my ear as he whispers the constellations. But it’s probably just the breeze. I shudder and cross my arms, squinting up.

There are too many clouds to see. Figures.

“Oh, you were on a run. Good, heaven knows you needed to get in shape after all that sitting.”               

               I’d like to say that in my maturity, I took a deep breath of the night air, let it fill me to completion as I washed out my anger and selected a point of serenity in my mind. I’d like to say that in my cleverness I turned my head just enough so he could hear a sarcastic retort that sent him reeling. If nothing else I’d like a bloodied nose as proof that I whipped around to defend myself and beat him to a bloody pulp.

               But as my mind whipped through those options obscenely quickly I found myself attempting all concurrently at subpar quality execution levels.

               I whip around halfway, teetering off balance, and blurt, “Yeah, well you, you—”

               I’m not going to admit whether or not that sentence had a clever conclusion and that the opportunity wasn’t consummated and thus cannot be judged for as I breathed out a shaky reply, I caught my ankle on a loose board, a physical embodiment of the quality of my childhood, and fell gracelessly into the cold water behind me.

               The only thing that could make this any worse is if I hear another splash beside me.

               And by worse, I mean better. I stay under water, waiting for it, as if Erik could read my mind for my desire for him to recreate the night we met. That, or I could drown the bastard. I wasn’t sure which one I’d pick but each contingency rested on the hopes that he’d jump in.

               I hear nothing as my lungs start to burn. Did he not get the script?

               I start to laugh ironically and I catch too much water. My obstinacy loses this round and I’m forced to surface, hacking and gulping in warm air. The warmth only goes so far. The breeze catches through my mop of hair and presses the cool water into me, dripping down to the nape of my neck and sending a chill down my spine. For a moment I welcome the sensation, before the cold becomes unbearable.

               My muscles ache with atrophy I have not yet conquered as I swim toward the bank of the pond fifteen feet away from where his silhouette looms, my heart pounding in anger I try to curb. I focus on my stroke, the one I’ve known for so many years and practiced so many times in this very pond.

               I swim straight to where the dock is. Where the dock should be.

               Where the dock was.

               Where the dock now floats twenty feet above the ground, suspended by the nails that once had kept it secured to the posts strategically placed in the water. My father, the doctor, would never have had the time to build the dock, but I explained that I’d measured and calculated the height of each side of the bank and found the average, theorizing that it’d be impossible to get out of the pond once someone had jumped into it. I even dragged him out here, and bless him, he gave me a couple of moments as he said he’d deal with it later. I’d known he wouldn’t, and in a rare moment of spontaneity I leapt into the pond to prove it, and he had to pull me out. His frown reprimanded me but the gleam in his eyes told me he was proud of my willingness to stick to my convictions.

               Dad just built me the dock because he was glad I’d finally got some balls.

               He should’ve seen how I handled my step-father.

               Erik’s chuckles drag me by my aching ankles to reality. I look back up at the mockery dangling above me, my only way out of this pond. I act like it’s not, bringing myself flush with the pond bank and working my hands into the soft dirt, ready to hoist myself up.

               Between the shake in my hands, the ache through the rest of me, the tears stinging my eyes, and my broken heart, I can’t do it.

               My hands slip through the cold dirt and when I hit the cold water I’m livid. A well-rehearsed, all-too-familiar “ERIK!” starts to cross my lips before he’s suddenly standing over me, beaming at me with his sharp grin so potent it cuts through the darkness.

               “You bastard,” I manage through my shaking teeth. I clamp them down so he doesn’t notice.

               “What? You’re the one that told me this house harbors too many bad memories.”

               Did I really? God, why did I ever trust him. “The house, you imbecile, the house. I said nothing about a deck I built with my father that would die within a year of building it.”

               He glances up at the wood floating above them and makes the nails dance until the boards creak. I wait for him to realize his mistake, for remorse to cross his face. “Sometimes you need to let go.” I duck down into the water as he chucks the boards over my head into the water, the splash raking through my heart. I resurface, fighting down sobs. Half of me knows he’s right. Half of me wants to launch myself out of the water and strangle him with my legs wrapped around his neck.

               “I hate you.”

               The sound of the broken dock floating unceremoniously in the pond.

               “I know.”

               I try to make my breathing quieter.

               “Quite right, too. Can’t even pull a prank on you without ruining the only good memories you have.” He recedes a bit into the shadows before I can read for signs of sincerity on his face. A small part of me tugs on my heart as I wait for my legs to fail so I can slip into that terribly wonderful mind of his.

               I play the smartest-one-in-the-room card. “It wasn’t a prank.”

               I can hear the smile in his breathing. My heart skips.

               “No, it wasn’t. I can’t get anything by you, Xavier.”

               I almost expected “Professor X” to come spewing out of that shithole of a mouth he has. Suddenly I’m thinking of ways to shut him up and a wave of heat surges through my body, making the water a bit more bearable for a moment before I shake it off.

               “Look, if you’re waiting for me to agree to your plan before letting me out of this pond I’ll have you know we both know the answer so I don’t understand why you’re playing this game. Just…” I grit my teeth. It’s been a while since I’ve had to fight down pride and untrusting sentiments in order to get help. I hate it. “Just give me a hand, please, would you?”

               He toes the mud in front of him. His resolve is unbelievable. It’s admirable. By admirable I mean disgusting. It all swells up and I blurt it before I can help it. Ironic how hard it is to filter my mouth when I’ve got only my voice in my head.

               “You should be the one in here, freezing to death,” I say, my voice catching around a sob. It gives me a moment to stop myself. I don’t. “You should be the one without powers. Or the one with powers, in a wheelchair.  You should be the one to make a decision between an unbearable amount of pain and helping a group of mutants who might already be dead.”

               Silence. Of course.

               “You should be the one who has to make the decision each day whether the next one is worth living.”

               I watch him slowly look up, register the lack of stars thanks to the clouds, and slowly look back down, gaze fixed on the dock floating in the water. He starts to talk, brushing my comments off completely like my words on the matter are the only ones that matter.

               Maybe, to him, they are.

               “What do you mean we both know the answer? Maybe you forgot but our mental rapport is a bit…lacking.”

               I want to tell him that “cheeky fuck” is my role, not his.

               “Don’t be foolish,” I snap, the chatter really working its way into my bones. “You wouldn’t have come to me if I weren’t of any expedient use to you. That’s what we all are to you, yeah? Temporary cogs in the overarching brilliant plans of the great Magneto. Well, let me let you in on a little secret, Erik. You may walk over me all you’d like, flaunting your stride on a legless man all you’d like, but I will help those mutants, and not for you. I’ll do it for them. And I’ll do it for me.”

               Breathe. “Not for you, not for her, not for Logan. For them.”

               I watch his eyes come back into focus. I know he wonders if, by “them,” I mean the missing mutants, or the children. My children. Their faces flash across my mind before I can grasp to any one of them long enough, to recall the sound of the laughter, the brightness of their smile. The gap where my heart should be lurches.

               He still hasn’t answered my question, and he knows it. “So why,” I hiss, breaking into pieces in the pond, “are you here playing games? Why am I still in this _fucking_ water as you stand there as if you’re entitled the whole goddamn world and everyone in it?”

               “I wanted your honesty.” I’m shocked by his unusually quick response. “I wanted to know where we stood. If you’d trust me to help you. I figured this might get me that.”

               My eyes widen and water pours in. As I splutter for words I rub my eyes harshly. The world is blurry with tears when I pull my hands away, gazing up at his stupid shadow. I hate having to look up at him.

               “You threw me in a pond so you’d get answers you could’ve gotten over a cup of tea. You’ve got to be joking.”

               “Right, like Charles Xavier would invite me to have some—”

               “You and your _bloody_ histrionics, you megalomaniac, you disgusting piece of excrement, you vile—”

               He steps out of the shadows and in the moonlight streaming through the clouds I get a decent look of him. “You want a hand, or not?”

               “Who, me? Really? Can’t just pull me up by my fucking belt buckle? The iron coursing through my veins.” I click my tongue as sardonically as possible. “Ooo, Erik Lehnsherr is slipping, you see it here folks. No, thanks, I’ll get myself out.”

               A challenge I’d already proven impossible. I’d rather die of hypothermia in this pond than have him pull me out. I thrust my legs back and once again reach the side. With renewed conviction I dig my hands in, waiting for Erik to walk away so he doesn’t see me struggle. He doesn’t move.

               Who am I kidding, he’d love to watch me struggle.

               I vaguely register him crouching down like I’m some incompetent child. I barely pay attention as his hand dips down toward mine, open but not demanding. I definitely don’t think about the fact that this is the closest we’ve come to intimacy in ten years besides tackling each other. That would be an occurrence I wouldn’t mind repeating now.

               But I have to climb this bloody bank.

               I forgot about my legs. I was so busy with my hands I’d completely neglected their leverage, and as I dig them into the mud deep beneath me I feel myself gaining purchase, my heart swelling with pride as I hitch myself up a couple of inches, close to throwing myself over the bank in victory.

               But my right leg suddenly twitches in ghost pain, and my chin slams onto the bank as I slip back down. Blood seeps through my mouth, sticking between my teeth as my tongue throbs from having bitten it. I’m now stuck in purgatory, half in a position to pull myself up and half out, head ringing in pain and resignation.

               It may be an illusion but I swear the hand draws closer, and I break. I look directly into his gaze, now so clear in the cool of the night. I almost expected them to glow red with the blood of his homo sapient ancestors, but they are the simple blue I am used to. They gleam a bit with mischief, victory, and something I don’t recognize, something I wouldn’t recognize without confirmation from his own stream of thoughts.

               As a smile works onto his face fury rips through me. He wants to play a game? So can I. He’s got his drama queen flair and his floating docks and ugly as shit helmet, but he doesn’t have my wit. He never will.

               I feign pain, forcing my face into a wince, and then I drop my shoulders in exaggerated resignation. I pretend to fight off a reluctant grin, and pretend to hesitate as I reach my hand out for his.

               I don’t, however, fake holding it there, waiting for him to come to me.

               I hold my shaking hand in the intermediate space between lovers and enemies, allies and liars. It feels heavy with anticipation.

He breaks. His hand fills the last inch between us and pulls me out of the water, his grasp electrifying my fingertips and the grin that spreads onto my face is genuine. I wonder if he knows what he’s just done.

               Checkmate.

               I straighten up, wringing out what I can of Hank’s sweatshirt, my smile causing more ache in my frigid face, and despite fatigue and latent hypothermia a subtly determined warmth spreads through me. This time, I’m victorious, and I’ve beaten Erik Lehnsherr at his own game, I’ve got him right where I want—

               His hands are in my wet hair and I’m pressed into him, my lips slammed into his violently, perfectly, tenderly, a consummate fit—

               Is he fucking kissing me?

               The _nerve_ of this boy, let me tell you.

               His hands move down my back and I do not object. I do not object like the weak piece of shit I am, and I even let out a hum of pleasure as he pulls me in closer, hungrily, angrily, like he wants to tear me apart and kiss me strongly all the same. My knees buckle from the overwhelming contact and it only makes me want more.

               We are locked together, entangled in a blinding cascade of fury and hatred and so similarly love and passion and I’m so cold and so hot and so happy and so livid I’m losing breath, losing a grip on reality except for pure ecstasy, bursts of warmth where his strong hands clench my body, where he tries to conceal his movements to rub some warmth into me as rough groping.

               I burst into a grin and he tries to shut me up but I turn my head, trying to drive him as crazy as he’s making me, and he relents and moves to kissing my neck, pinning my arms to my sides with a heart-stopping embrace, and my legs finally go, painlessly and blissfully. I feel like I died in that pond and went to heaven.

               But as soon as it started, it’s over, and in a flash, Erik is off of me, leaving me to cope with my shaking legs, at least three bite marks on my neck, and sopping wet clothes.

               My head is swimming but the moment the cold bites into my skin and I’m drawn back to reality I realize what he’s done. The grin slips off my face and the ecstasy dissipates but I’m still annoyingly warm everywhere he’s touched me, paradoxically cold everywhere else.

               “Fuck you.”

               “Checkmate.” He grins, smoothing out his hair exactly the way I once told him I hated it.

               “Stalemate!” I snap, raising the hand he’d pulled me out of the pond with and wiggling it at him before sticking up a selective finger to drive the point home. His smile fades a bit before coming back full force, his fangs gleaming.

               It sounds disgusting and I actually cannot explain how I find it disturbingly attractive.

               Kind of how I can’t explain how disgusted I am that I let him do that to me, how happy I am that I let him do that to me, how angry I am he’s using me, how good I feel that I’m still in this game.

               “Alright, alright. Stalemate. For now, Charles Xavier. For now.”

               _So_ dramatic.

               “You still roll your eyes like you used to.” I start to protest. “I get it, I get it. There’s so much of my beauty to take in you don’t know where to look first. It must be confusing.”

               I silently vow to glue my eyes in a fixed position and I almost, almost relent. I almost laugh. I want to, uncontrollably. But I can’t.

               “Stalemate,” I manage over a mound of suppressed chuckles.

               “Stalemate.” He turns to go, to leave me sopping wet, dying of hypothermia. He must get off on it, leaving me in abject conditions. “Is that what we are? Stale mates?”

               I imagine the feel of glue spilling out of my eyelids and onto my eyes as I stare at him shaking his head with laughter, turning around, and walking back to the mansion, feet tracing the ground with the grace of a man who has walked these paths many times, who knows them as he knows his own home.

               It isn’t until I take my own unsteady steps forward, trip on a stray rock, and end up flat on my face do I realize that it’s happening again. Or rather, it never stopped.

               I’m in love with Erik Lehnsherr.

               There should be a TV show. _I’m In Love With A Psychopathic Bastard._

               But yes.

               I am in love with Erik Lehnsherr.

               …

               Fuck.

              


	5. Chapter 5

My renewed obsession with my childhood or rather a lack thereof has left my curled up in the small space between the corner bookshelf of the library and the wall behind it as I wait for my legs to give out.

               I didn’t exactly want to be walking or standing when the sensation occurred and certainly didn’t want to be around anyone. I feel like my legs have already gone but I think that’s just because they’re numb from being in a cramped space that once was perfect for my twelve-year old body but is now much too small for me.

               I picked somewhere even Raven wouldn’t find me. A hiding space that I never shared with her, and not because it held hide-and-seek merit. She knew the kitchen cupboards, had found me in my mother’s old wardrobe, the alcove in the trees, even under the cover of the grand piano.

               But I never told her where I used to hide from my stepfather.

               His drunken rages led him tearing through the house in search of my stepbrother and I and he often came to the library and ripped through my father’s books, screaming my name in rage. He was easy to avoid as I was quick and had quite the unexpected upper hand. But I never bothered to stop him, because I was afraid. I was a coward.

               I like to think I’m not a coward now. While I used to listen to the sound of his fists on my stepbrother from my safe haven I will now step forth and find those who are helpless as well.  If I can manage my power. If I can keep my emotional instability at bay.

               If I can keep him out of it as best as possible.

               “Charles?” Raven’s call sends a jolt through my body as I’d been sitting in silence for three hours with nothing but my own thoughts and a pile of old books I’d read three times over. I hear her fingers tracing over the bookshelves, not an inch of dust on them, but I can’t hear where she is. I smile at the thought of her padding around, barefoot, sifting through bookshelves like we used to. “Charles?” A loud sigh. “He’s not in here, either. Did you check the woods? He likes it out there.” I hear her slam the door on her way out of the library.

               When she whispers my name again, a distant chill races through me.

               “Come on, Charles, where are you?” Her voice sounds misty, like she’s speaking through a thick pane of glass.

               My heart begins to pound uncontrollably.

               “What a pain in the ass.”

 Logan isn’t in the library. Logan, too, is speaking through a thick layer of glass, his words distorted and barely intelligible.

               Tears spring in my eyes as a small throb begins in my feet.

               “Maybe he’s down by the pond again.” This voice is no more clear than the others but resounds for much longer, reverberating in my skull with a stab of pain and I find myself in uncontrollable agony.

               I finally accept what is going on.

               _Where is he? He never hides on me. He just mopes on the couch all day._

_And he calls me a child, honestly. Maybe he’s crying in his bed._

_This house was creepy before it became a school._

_I missed this house._

The last one sends me over the edge and I arch my back in agony, fire splitting my spine. My last intelligible thought in the following moments is that I need to get out from behind here so no one has to drag me out like the useless fool I am.

               With the last effort from my legs I know I will get for a bit—just until I find those mutants—I shove off of the wall, spikes shooting up my shins. I slide back into the open and roll over onto my side, curling up and biting back sobs.

               I don’t want them to find me, I don’t want them to—

               They all burst into the library at once, clutching their foreheads and shouting for me to stop. I realize I’m projecting every burst of pain I get and all of my thoughts and as the pain heightens I use all of my energy to pull out of their minds, and just when the pain blinds me and I’m sure I’m going to black out, it ends, leaving me with a throbbing back, the bottom half of me numb.

               I look down at the useless pieces of meat and feel my heart drop with heavy sorrow.

               I prop myself up onto my elbows and don’t even bother wiping the tears off as they stream down my face. “I’m so sorry,” I choke through mucus and salty tears. “I didn’t mean to.”

               Raven starts sobbing uncontrollably and I’m furious with myself for hurting her.

               “Why are you apologizing? Oh my God, he’s apologizing. Only you, Charles, you idiot, you idiot…” She skids across the floor, falls to her knees, and pulls me in, clutching my aching head to her heart, telling me to shut up, that they should all be apologizing, that I deserve none of this, that I deserve everything else.

               It’s nice, at first, but she’s sort of suffocating me and the onslaught of voices in my head and the sudden loss of my legs has my head spinning as I try to keep everything under control. The only coherent thing I can do is push Raven away. She looks hurt, and in the confusion of the moment I blurt, “What, hate to be pushed away, do you?”

               “Charles,” someone reprimands me. My wits come flooding in with his voice. I whip around.

               _How dare you. You have the audacity to accuse me of something, anything…look at you, standing there on your own two legs, glaring down at me._

I watch him cringe as he tries to recall months of training, months of learning how to push Emma Frost out of his head, but I’m no fool, I always left out some advice, always left loopholes to slip into everyone’s mind. For practical uses. I would never intrude arbitrarily. Well, I promised I wouldn’t but promises have to be upheld on both ends for them to mean anything.

               _You fool._

               _Get out._

_What, quaking in your steel-toed boots without your helmet? Tell me, does it mean nothing to you that you once donned your worst enemy’s own helmet only to claim you’d be nothing like him? Is that how the humans view you, now? Hail you as a hero? Is that how the world views you? Is that how the people who matter to you view you?_

               Raven catches on quickly. “Stop it, Charles.”

               I wonder briefly if I could inflict pain on Erik, if I could make his brain disconnect with his spinal cord and send him sprawling on the ground. The thought leaves me almost as soon as it came to me. I realize Erik’s anger as well as his thoughts is in my mind.

               I cannot have Erik without his rage.

               I look up at him and in his eyes I see that he’s heard me. I tear away from his gaze and the connection is gone. I feel emptier but less furious.

               Logan shoots a bewildered glance at Hank, who he’s recently befriended. The two of them have the oddest sense of companionship I’ve ever seen but when I look at the way Logan talks with Hank he seems the most comfortable in his own skin I’ve ever seen, and I recall Logan insisting they’re good friends in the future. After punching Hank in the face.

               Hank’s just a good boy so he lets Logan go, exchanging a glance with him and shooting him a weak smile.

               I almost bark out a laugh. Maybe I’m just a good boy, that’s why I let my best friend shoot me in the spine and let him go. With my sister. Who he fucked.

               That would have sent a shudder down my spine so I let that train of thought stop there before I rip Erik’s brains to shreds.

                I watch Hank leave the room and I don’t need telepathy to know where he’s going. My heart sinks and I blink hard to force the tears back into my eyes. My throat aches as I scan the bookshelves, making myself choose which book I should read next.

               The sound of wheels grinding on the soft wood floors threatens to end me and I absently slip into Raven’s mind, listening to whatever song she has stuck in her head, careful to disguise my presence. I take shallow breaths, clawing the ground beneath me. I shut my eyes as Hank offers me his hand. I blindly grasp to it and swallow my pride as he pulls me up and drops me unceremoniously into my throne from hell.

               I sink down as low as possible, hands covering my face, as if I cover my eyes I can’t see my useless legs, can’t see their looks of shame and pity and embarrassment, as they can’t see me.

               I peek through my hands. Everyone suddenly casts their glances elsewhere, Logan caught off guard and suddenly splits his knuckles and pretends to polish his claws with his shirt.

               I’m extremely tempted to slip into all their minds and make them think I can walk, make them watch me as I get up and walk out of the library, make them forget I was ever in here, give me a few moments of peace. But I’m too afraid I’ll hurt them. I’m not in control yet.

               “I’ll be out in a minute,” I say, my voice cracking until my words are imperceptible. I try again. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

               I don’t say it with enough conviction. They stare at me, unsure whether that’s a hint to stay and keep me company or get the hell out before I start yelling.

               “Please,” I whine childishly. It does the trick and they’re all fighting to get out, to not be the last one in here stuck with Professor Neurotic.

               I regret forcing their absence the moment I’m left alone to drown in it. I miss the noise. I miss children charging around and knocking everything over and me either charging around with them laughing or yelling at them to be mature once I’d remember I was supposed to be the adult. I remember being able to keep up with them as we train, never once getting winded or my legs cramping up. I remember loving them and teaching them to love themselves, too.

               I remember being happy but I can’t recall what it feels like.

               Logan says that one day my house will again be filled with voices, with kids causing trouble. With mutant teachers by my side to help me. That this house will not just be a school but a home, something resembling what it is now but a little bit brighter and a little less lonely.

               That Erik and I may one day work again in tandem.

               That I will be capable of wisdom, power, and happiness. Though I can’t imagine happiness comes very easily with baldness.

               The thought makes me laugh to myself and it reverberates around the tall, caved ceiling until it’s filled the room. I grasp desperately to the smile on my face and the hope Logan has so kindly returned to me and I let the task ahead fill me up, the end goal in sight, lighting the way.

***

               “We’ll need to give him a few days,” Hank says from his point at the end of the long dining room table. “Last time we jumped a bit too quickly into Cerebro and it didn’t work out too well. But we can still put these few days into good use. Charles will let us know when he’s ready.”

               Everyone turns to look at me. I offer a weak smile.

               “What can we do without knowing much else about the situation?” Raven continues to look at me, furrowing her eyebrows with concern. I nod for affirmation that I’m alright.

               “Scan the newspapers, recordings I’ve pieced together from the news channel, listen to the radio. People hate to admit mutants are at large still, like we all just sit in our houses so we don’t cause trouble, so they’ll manipulate any news story to sound as normal as possible.”

               Erik laughs mirthlessly. “My experience has been that they’re quick to pin anything down on us. I think we might have heard something by now.”

               Hank shoots a sideways glance at Erik, irritated. “There’s been little since Cuba, especially with Vietnam. They tried to stifle Washington press very quickly. I’m guessing they won’t broadcast anything if a few mutants go missing. In fact, they’d probably throw a party like the sadistic bastards they are, right, Erik?”

               I want to punch Hank in the shoulder with pride, but Logan clears his throat, either so impervious to tension at this point he doesn’t notice or he simply doesn’t care. “So, what, we go through all this news in hopes there’s something…weird?”

               Hank shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, we know how mutants work pretty well. Well, most of us do.” He’s clever, so he shoots a look at me instead of the man that comment was directed to. I’m clever, too, but I’m also bitter and resentful so I smirk knowingly in Erik’s direction, but he’s also clever and focuses instead on the ceiling. “If we sift through and find something that strikes us as unusual, we’ll look into it.” Logan grimaces at the idea of reading. I make a mental note to work on that with him. Hank looks at me in astonishment at the lack of motivation. I exchange an arrogant glance to commiserate with him. “It’s just a temporary thing until Charles is back. We’re just emulating the effects of Cerebro.”

               Logan looks around, connecting stares with Raven and Erik and finally me. “Dibs on TV,” he sputters, launching off of the wall he was leaning on and skidding out of the room.

               “I’ll take the radio,” Raven and Erik say in tandem. For a moment I’m appalled at their abhorrence for reading but I quickly realize they both figure I’d enjoy the reading more. Always so thoughtful, the two of them.

               Raven bursts into that awkward giggle of hers and Erik allows himself a reluctant smile as they connect their gazes. I give them a second, and then two. Three. Four. This is repulsive.

               I clear my throat sardonically—which is something you would think couldn’t be done, but I had a bit of a blood transfusion after Cuba and they must have mixed up blood types because now I have liquefied sarcasm coursing through my veins—but something gets caught in my throat and then I’m genuinely coughing over my own spit and my eyes are watering and it looks like I’m crying over my ex-boyfriend and ex-sister’s eye sex and it’s all so uncomfortable I push myself out the room, grabbing Hank’s stack of newspapers on the way.

               I hear his clumsy gait follow me down the hallway and we end up in my study, raking through the stack of newspaper, looking for anything unusual.

               At least, I’m raking through the newspapers, but Hank is grimacing and looks like he’s sitting on a pile of rocks. I peer over my reading glasses at him. He opens his mouth, considers the value of his own life, and then shuts his mouth. Good boy.

               “You know, you could just—”

               “No,” I growl, sending the useless newspaper I’d just read singing across the room, landing its target on Hank’s forehead.

               “Ow.”

               We read for a couple more minutes before the tension becomes so tangible I feel Hank swallowing it and then vomiting it back up in his mouth.

               “Charles, just—”

               “Hank!”

               “Sorry.”

               He’s supposed to be smart.

               His next words come so closely together without a single breath I hear him developing an ulcer as they cross his bitten lips. “If-we’re-going-to-do-this-together-we-need-to-all-get-along.”

               “Oh, really?” I say dryly, snapping open another paper. “I though you could do something together without actually getting along. My parents were married for ten years, remember.”

               Hank slips his hands up underneath his glasses to rub his eyes and I realize I’m the child in this relationship.

               At least we get along.

               “Look, buddy, I’m sorry. But this whole thing is temporary. Fleeting. Ephemeral. Terminal. So there’s no point in trying to disinter any sort of sentiments from a decade ago. I know…” I wonder if I should even say it. I’ve already established I’m a hypocrite, why not? “I know you still love her. It’s obvious. I do, too. But she’s different now and we have to accept her as she is. We have to accept that she won’t always be around, that she can make her own decisions now. That she always could.”

               Hank bites his cheek and quickly drops my gaze.

               “Just say it.”

               “Are you saying all that for my sake or for yours?”

               I pretend to consider it. “Both of ours.”

               He nods and I’m grateful to have someone on my team. “I wasn’t really talking about Raven.”

               I look for something solid to grasp to and find myself digging my nails into the newspaper, sabotaging a potentially relevant article. His words dig in and black settles around the edges of my vision and the fear of everything comes crashing around me, the fear of the future and the present and the way the past licks at my heels, itching to drag me back into its darkness. My lonely heart throbs and shrinks, smaller and smaller, my breathing hitching it in my throat.

               I slam the paper down, fumbling to point at the article I’d punctured so quickly I jam my finger into its socket. “I…I think I’ve…” I swallow, fighting to keep my words steady, focusing on the pounding of my finger to keep me grounded.

               Keep me grounded. I think the crack in my spine has quelled any worries of that, actually. One less thing to worry about. Hank draws up next to me, concern wrapped around his boyish face.

               “I’ve got something.”

               “You’ve got plenty of things,” he says, resting a hand on my shoulder and giving me a small smile. I stare at him, mouth slightly agape and it’s not until his eyebrows furrow together that I realize he’s missed something.

               “No, Hank, like an article. I’ve got something relevant.”

               His eyes widen and he recoils immediately before slamming his glasses onto his nose and staring intently at the newspaper like it might pop to life and give him a reason to exit the awkward situation. “Right, right, let me see that.” He picks up the paper and pulls it taut across his blushing face. “AIDs on the rise…now presumed as fatal…uh, Charles, why…”

               “Not that article, my God, Hank. The robberies.”

               He turns so red I can see his red cheeks through the newspaper.

               “Right. I’m not trying to be dumb, sorry.”

               “Generally not, no, but we can’t control everything.”

               That gets me a laugh and I manage to slow my heartbeat and allow myself a small smile as Hank’s lips catch around his whispers as he reads. “A numerous amount of robberies have occurred at random times throughout the past week. Authorities have written it off as local gang members undergoing initiation but further speculation reveals that the robberies are not typical crass crimes. The thieves aren’t pilfering classic items like jewelry or loose cash but piping, wires, and…metal.”

               Hank snaps the paper over so he can lock eyes with me. “You don’t think they’re working for Erik, do you?”

               I burst into laughter and Hank laughs nervously. I throw myself across the couch, grabbing a glass of scotch I’d poured for myself when we’d started reading. “My dear, why would he hire people to steal metal when he can shoot his best friend in the back and show up at his house ten years later and shoot me a look with those big blue eyes and ask me for parts from my refrigerator as I throw myself—metaphorically—head over heels to get him what he wants without anything in return?” I murmur into the glass.

               It takes me a minute that I’d said that aloud.

               “Erm, what?”

               “Nothing, give me that.” I grab the paper out of his hands for lack of anything better to do. “So, what do you think? Odd enough?”

               “Sure, but I’m not sure what else we can draw from it. There’s no names, we’d have to consult the police, which involves us admitting our residence in an ostensibly abandoned building, which would alert potential threats in the area, and then…”

               “God, mate, you’ve been reading my notes for my philosophy class? Murphy’s Law isn’t until next week.”

               Hank narrows his eyes at the empty glass in my hand. “That’s not even philosophy, that’s just quack bullsh—never mind. It’s something to start with. As long as we’ve got that. Something to start with.”

               I nod at him, turning away to signal that he’s free to do something other than read periodicals incessantly with a grumpy old man but his inherently heavy breathing weighs over me. I turn back around and he’s staring at me like I’m going to collapse into an inebriated heap any moment. I wiggle the glass in his face. “You want some?” He shakes his head fervently. “Then piss off, take one of the cars. Go out and do something fun for once.”

               “F-fun?”

               “F-fun?” I whine in a mocking voice. “What’s that, Charles? What’s fun?”

               Hank scowls at me like he can taste my sour words. He clenches and unclenches his fists and I wait for it, freezing in place despite my urge for more scotch. I watch him open his jaw and then clench down, thinking better of it. His body spins on its heels and starts to storm off but his words were left where he was standing and when he comes storming back I watch him bite down on them.

               “You’re fucking welcome.”

               I bait him in. It’s too easy. “No need. I’m the one that found the article.”

               “I wasn’t talking about the goddamn article. For helping you. For putting up with you.” He hesitates, drawing in a sharp breath, so I give him a cocky smirk to push him over the edge. I watch the weight lift off his chest. “For not leaving you,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

               I wish for nothing more than to leap up on my own feet and clap him on the back. I want to give him a hug. But I stare down at my glass. I’d played out his monologue in my head but I hadn’t figured out my own response. I look up at him, at the red tints threatening to surge into his eyes and swallow them whole.

               “I’d say thank you but I don’t believe those two words fully encompass the gratitude I owe you, Hank.”

               “Then keep them. God knows I owe you a lot, too.” I’m taken aback and it shows. He quickly fights through my reaction. “I didn’t stay just because I felt I owed you something or because Erik is a crazy son of a bitch and I’d never comply with him even if it meant being with…with Raven. Though that factors in a fair amount.” We both laugh before he presses his lips together and glances away for a second. “And I don’t know what happens once they leave again. I don’t know what happens when either one of us figures out what to do with ourselves.” He throws his arms up in the air, looking around him, everywhere but me, anywhere but me, his gesture articulating the inexpressible.

               “This is my home. Where…where there’s always something to start with. So don’t think I stick around just for you, old man. But Logan says I’m here for the whole time. Here for the long run. And we both know I can’t let Logan down. I might not live to see the day we’re supposedly friends.” He smiles genuinely off in the distance and I plant the very image Logan shared with me of him and Hank shaking hands in this very room. His grin splits his face. “Not that I want to.”

Then he shrugs at me, so I shrug at him, and the moment’s gone, so he tells me to stop drinking, and I tell him to go read his books like a nerd, and then he dives across the couch to reveal the stack of books I have hiding under the pillows like the nerdy hypocrite I am, and I’ve got him in a good spot where I can put him in a headlock with my arms, and it feels so good, not just to be strangling one of my best friends with the only appendages that work but to be laughing and for it to be so genuine and to know that I don’t have to keep him in a headlock for him to stay with me and I don’t have to fear that for once.

Because sometimes, it’s okay to let go.

               When you’re the one doing the letting go.


	6. Chapter 6

The two of us had smugly presented the article to everyone else even though, as Hank pointed out, it held little value thanks to its ambiguity.

               Raven had read it first. “Alright, well, it says the criminals are working their way down to Manhattan. Why don’t we just head down there?”

               Neither Hank nor I had picked that up upon reading the article but both tacitly pretended to. And while it was barely a lead, we all quickly leapt on the opportunity as if the five of us stuck in a car would be nothing other than a magical bonding experience.

               I demanded that Hank drive and I take the passenger seat for no other reason than to force the three of them into an uncomfortable position. I considered it a social experiment and I found it interesting that Logan insisted on sitting in the middle. Maybe he doesn’t know about Raven and Erik. Maybe he just likes the view from the middle seat. I don’t really care other than the fact that the awkward tension is providing me entertainment on the long car ride down to Manhattan.

               We stop a few times in neighborhoods as Raven impersonates police officers and questions a few locals about the break-ins. It doesn’t give us much.

               “It’s not any use,” Erik says as Raven sits back into her seat and we drive off again. “None of the victims have seen the burglars.”

               “Maybe that is useful,” I respond quickly. “Doesn’t that make it more odd that there’s few signs of a break-in other than missing parts?” I glance up into the rearview mirror. He’s smirking derisively out the window, rising to the challenge.

               “Do you know anyone else that can control metal?”

               “No. But our powers can make anything easier, cleaner, and quicker. Look at Pietro, who could run into a house and out in a second without anyone knowing he’s in there.”

               Erik scowls. “You don’t think…”

               “No,” Logan says quickly. “He wouldn’t come all the way down here to stir up trouble.”

               A thought suddenly occurs to me and I turn around in my seat to make my gaze known. “Hang on, Logan. How did you come across Raven and Erik, anyway?” I wait for them to exchange glances but all three of them stare directly ahead, jaws set, staring straight through me. This ought to be good. Raven finally rolls her eyes and glares at the other two.

               She relents. “A strip club.”

               I can only imagine the look on my own face.

               She sticks her tongue out. “Look, believe it or not, not all of us stoop to stealing in order to get a few extra bucks, even mutants need money.”

               My eyes widen. “Good thing you took the high road and pole-danced instead.”

               She leans forward. “You’re not my mom, idiot. I was a bit desperate after leaving Erik.” His sharp grin slices across his face and she leans to slug him in the shoulder. “Financially, dumbass. And I didn’t want to come begging to you.” Raven crosses her arms and slams back against the seat, finished.

               “That still doesn’t explain why—”

               “Oh, why ever would I find myself in a strip bar? I was looking to pick up a bit of cash myself.” I grimace. “I like them,” Logan spits before laughing humorlessly at my innocence.

               Erik just raises his eyebrow at me with a devilish smirk.     

               “Oh, don’t even pretend,” I snap. “You were looking for her.” Erik just shrugs. I want to punch him. In the face. With my lips.

               I shake my head and turn back around. “What, and you just all decided to band together in a strip club?”

               Logan laughs again. “Kind of. I’d been loosely trying to follow Mystique’s trail since she let me loose from Stryker. We all just happened to meet up there and that’s when I recognized Magneto.”

               I turn around once more and my gaze hones in on Logan’s slightly fat lip and a small scratch beneath Erik’s eye. I shake my head again, my neck sore from expressing my constant disapproval, and turn back around once more. We stay silent until Hank brings us to the outskirts of Manhattan, water glimmering in the distance.

               I smile to myself when I see the Statue of Liberty.

               Hank pulls up to a random curb and stops the car. I look over at him. He has a distant look on his face like he’s trying to grasp at a memory he’s lost long ago.

               “Hank?” I ask. He blinks, hard, then looks over at me. “What made you stop here? Do you see something?”

               Something about his gaze makes my voice falter. Despite the throbbing temptation to burst into his head I let him work out whatever it is he’s mulling over.

               The color suddenly seeps back into his cheeks and he looks over at me. “Instinct, I guess.” He nods to the large patch of industrial park that stretches out to our left. “Doesn’t that look a bit odd to you?”

               We all look over to our left, then at each other, then back at Hank.

               “Construction in the city? Unheard of,” Erik mutters.

               Hank looks at me and then rips open the car door, striding away so confidently he forgets to close the door and leaves us all staring after him. His surety drives us to get out of the car and follow after him but I’m hesitant nonetheless.

               Raven falls into line next to me as I insist on pushing myself. Logan jogs to catch up with Hank. Erik trails behind us and I revel in his alienation while concurrently wishing for him to draw up next to me and link his elbow with mine. So I reach to my left and squeeze Raven’s hand and the desire for Erik is almost gone.

               We quicken our pace to catch up to Logan and Hank, who are leaning over a manhole cover.                               “Hank, what the hell are you doing?” I finally break and snap at him. He shakes his head, muttering to himself.

               “It’s weird, isn’t it? We didn’t see any construction signs, yet this lot is cleared out and prepped for work. There wasn’t any traffic on the way here and there’s no workers about. The only sign that’s here is the one at the entrance.”

               All of us look over our shoulders at the sign we’d disregarded on our way in.

               “It says, ‘no heavy loads.’ Why should there be no heavy loads? This land is as solid as any other.”

               I’m still squinting to read the sign when it hits me. I turn back around, smiling at Hank’s intuition. “Unless there’s something underground.”

               “Something underground,” he echoes, vacancy glazing his eyes again. Logan slaps him in the back before he can succumb to it again. Something distant pounds in the back of my own mind but it slips from my grasp as Hank tears off the cover, gazing down.

               “Let’s split up, then. Why don’t the three of us go down and Raven and Charles keep watch?” Erik suggests and the stupidity of his offer is so blatant I half wonder if he’s done it just to get at Raven. She happily complies.

               “Are you kidding me? I can’t tell if you’re being sexist or just a dick.”

               “Both,” the three of us exclaim in unison, all narrowing our eyes at Erik, finally reaching solidarity in the face of a common enemy. It feels good until I see that Erik doesn’t join in our chuckling.

               “How silly of me,” he drawls. “I should’ve invited you and Charles. How dare I exclude anyone.” My stomach feels like it’s been punched. I suck in the last of my laughter and let it back out in a sigh.

               “I mean, it’s fine. I’ll stick with Charles. It’s not like he’s the worst company anyone could have.” Raven glares at Erik, but I know she’s only doing it so I don’t feel bad. So she doesn’t feel bad for making me feel bad. I wonder where the cycle of altruism begins and the cycle of self-interest ends. I want her to love me the way she used to, simply and unconditionally. But I know I don’t even love her like that anymore. Unconditionally, yes. Simply, no.

               I avert my gaze when I feel her grinning at me, waiting for me to join in on goading Erik, just like old times. I find it odd everyone seems to be waiting for me to choose a side. Raven, simultaneously enticing me back into the past and forcing me to accept her future. Hank, looking for me to encourage his freedom but worried that if I stick with him I’ll continue to burden him. Logan, who’s whole-heartedly on my side but only from what he knows of my future, which makes me feel hollow and superficial. Erik, ambiguous as always.

               But maybe they’re waiting for me to be on their side because they’re already on mine.

               The rarely positive revelation nearly knocks me off my feet. Metaphorically. I look at all of them, annoyed, crossing their arms, waiting for me to side with one of them, waiting for me to make a decision because I had tacitly been voted in as the leader despite my obvious weaknesses.            

               How dare I not trust them the way they trust me.

               “What even possessed you to come over to this revolting manhole anyway? Why is everyone so quick to get down there?” Erik snaps, his anger reeling on Hank, who recoils from the hole.

               Something about Erik’s words sends a chill through me. _Possessed._ The hairs prickle on the nape of my neck, but Raven slips underground with a distracting thud before I can grasp to it.

               “Raven!” I roar, starting to throw myself out of my wheelchair before remembering my place. With a heavy heart I shift my weight back and rest futilely in the char, defeated. Worry continues to pound through me, and I instinctively shoot a glance at Erik, my rock, my sense of security, all the things he used to be…

               I rip my gaze away before he can catch it. “Hank,” I choke. “Hank, please go after her.” I feel Erik’s heavy gaze on me.

               “I’ll do it,” he hisses, jutting his arm out at Hank as a barrier. I watch Hank pull his lips back, his teeth baring as he turns a bit blue, and for a moment I think he’s going to faint before his feet gain purchase, his fists clenching in on themselves. I stare, mouth agape despite the familiarity of the phenomenon, as Hank’s skin blends with the blue fur prickling upward from his wrists, swallowing his pallid skin, consumed.

               “No,” Hank growls. “I will. Don’t think I’ll fail the same way you did.”

               Erik’s face twitches not in shame but in contempt. “Don’t think I left her, you hairy prick. I did what you two never could.” He flicks his eyes toward me, lucid with the hunger to lash out. I feel the manhole cover quiver with anticipation, and the satisfaction of his lack of control after all these years races through me before colliding with fear. I shut my eyes to escape his gaze and see flashes of how he hung up Hank like a circus act for all to laugh at, the way Logan still feels the ghost of the pain where metal rods protruded through his chest.

               I can’t fear Erik. He fears himself. He can’t know anyone else does.

               I swallow, as if that will simultaneously suppress my fear and stop me from projecting my thoughts. I open my eyes, glaring at Erik until my gaze is palpable, weighing down on him.

               He turns to me. “I let her go.”

               He says the words again, securing the knife stabbing further into my chest, and I feel Hank thinking the same. “I let her go, and I loved her for who she was, not who I wanted her to be.”

               “Get off your high horse,” Hank says, his voice trembling, the contrast stark with his pulsing, burly form. He musters all the courage he can. “At least we never shot her, never tried to kill her. At least we kept her safe. And happy.”

               Erik lets out a huff of laughter and looks back at me, as if waiting for me to join in on whatever joke is occurring. I raise an eyebrow. He throws his arms out to the side and slaps them back into place, done with the world and all its inferiority, its inability to keep up with the Great Magneto.

               “Alright. Then let’s both go. The man who kept her safe and the man who actually gave her what she wanted. Perfect combination. After you, Apeshit.”

               Hank leers at Erik, and ten years ago Erik would have leapt back—Hank never would have went at him—cursing and spitting, but now he stands there, cold and haughty. He shrugs. “Me first, then. Unless Third Wheel wants to go first.”

               Logan raises his eyebrows and points to himself with his middle finger, mouthing, “Me?” Erik winks at him, nodding suggestively. The tension rises to a point where I’m begging for my power to cut out so I can leap up and push them miles away from each other and jump after Raven myself. Somehow that would be more satisfying than penetrating their minds and yelling at them to stop, turning the anger onto me.

               Logan takes a few steps forward, his anger manifesting in every flaunted step. I can only imagine if Raven were up here. “Can everyone put their penises back in their pants and get back to the matter at hand? Thanks.”

               I choke down a laugh.

               “‘Third Wheel?’ Is that my cool name? My equivalent of ‘Magneto?’” Erik’s nose twitches up. I try not to pay too much attention to the way he looks when he’s irked, a face I’ve instigated multiple times just for the sake of seeing it. He used to do the same.

               “Logan, please, can you just go after her?” I try, though I could sit through a show of Everyone versus Erik Lehnsherr for quite a while, I’ve decided.

               I can almost bask in the heat pouring off of Logan, who waves me off. “You know, bub, me being Third Wheel insinuates that you and Hank are—”

               The words catch in his throat as Erik whips the manhole cover out from under Logan’s feet, who hadn’t noticed the fact he’d stepped on it until it was out from under him, plunging him down the hole to join Raven. I’m immediately working into Erik’s highly-defensive mind, but his momentum carries him faster and soon a blur of blue slips down the hole, Hank gone as well.

               Everyone’s anger comes slipping into me and I freeze Erik in his place.

               “You’re not going to screw this up. You came to me for help. I’m not here to help you, I’m here to help them, and you’re not going to stop that. Perhaps you came back to harass us, to get at Hank or rekindle something with Raven, or manipulate Logan into helping you for some other reason, but you aren’t going to win any of us over into your whole supremacist scheme.”

               I take a moment to breathe in deeply, choosing my words carefully, working the most hateful and most gentle words out. “You either go down there with them, prepared to accept assistance from them and myself, or you take no part in this at all. If this is as far as you can manage to go, then leave now. We’ll handle it from here.”

               I loosen him from my mental grasp and watch the life flood back into him, movement flowing back through him as he steps back from pushing Hank in, his back turned to me. He runs his fingers through the hair matted onto his forehead, agitated, heat shooting through me. I cast my glance downward, my aggression gone.

               He turns his head over his shoulder, just enough for me to catch the golden sunset lowering onto his face, softening the hard glare set on his face, enveloping it until it fades, something  less angry but not completely unfamiliar settling onto his features. I’m ashamed to admit I like the way I can see him selecting his words carefully, the way he usually does. Scarce in his words but always careful.

               Erik Lehnsherr, I realize, is not a liar.

               He is a bastard, and an ass, and halfway to being insane, and many other things.

               But Erik is not a liar. He means what he says.

               “I didn’t come back to harass you, or screw your sister.” He blinks. “Again,” he adds, a smirk bursting onto his face that leaves as quickly as it comes.

               I lean forward, elbows on the armrests, waiting for it.

               He faces forward, looks down at the hole, and disappears into the darkness, perpetually leaning into the distance, grasping at everything I want him to be and everything he is, and watching him slip out of my fingers.

               Oh, I hate that bastard.

               I slam back into my chair, slipping down until my legs flop out of the footrests and onto the concrete ground. I flit through everyone’s head, feeling their presence, ensuring their stability. I’m mulling over whose head to stick myself into for the long run when I feel someone else’s.

               _“What even possessed you to come over to this revolting manhole anyway?”_

“Oh, shit,” I blurt as it dawns on me, throwing myself into a twist to get a better view of the person sneaking up behind me, but suddenly cold, rock-hard fingers envelop my neck, grasping unkindly at the hair on the nape of my neck as they shove my head downward, my gaze resting on the legs that have failed me time and time again, and fail me now.

               As I feel a needle slip into my skin and a chill burst through me with my newest revelation, I feel the disappointed stare of my father glaring at me over a _Sherlock Holmes_ book, the fabricated sneer of David Hume as he shakes my head at my ignorance of not just induction but general observation skills.

               “Now your legs and your mind are useless,” the voice of Emma Frost slices through me, as hard as the diamond fingers wrapped around the back of my neck. It’s stupid, but I try to shove into her mind, and blinding white heat stabs into my mind, and I yank out, jamming my palms into my watery eyes to try and stave off the pain, my next attempt to leap into Erik’s mind and send him a warning.

               But the voices leave me. The cold feel of Logan’s palms as they trace the sewer’s walls for a sense of direction in the darkness slips from my palms. Raven’s concurrent hatred and affection for both Erik and Hank echoes in my mind until it fades away and I can’t remember her conclusion about either man. I no longer taste the blood on my lip from where Hank bites down out of fear and angst and...what was it? I’m losing them, losing the calm I’d instilled in Erik, the sense of leadership inherent within him that I was trying to evince for everyone’s sake, and it’s lost.

               She kicks me full force in the back, and as I’m flung face first, skidding toward the dark hole, I feel the pain shoot down my shoulder blades, down my back, down my spine…down to my legs.

               I grin like an idiot for a split second before my jaw clamps down as it hits the side of the hole, blood spilling between my teeth after biting my tongue. Disoriented, I grasp at things that aren’t there and soon enough I’m gracelessly landing in a heap in the pool of light from the hole before that bitch throws the cover over it and I’m cast in darkness.

               I’m still smiling at the pain shooting up and down my shins like some sick masochist. I manage to wipe off my grin once I’m hacking up blood from my tongue and dust from gasping during my fall. Dampness sweeps up my pants, the stench of sewer water making me retch even more.

               The giddiness lasts me about three minutes as I stagger down the path, tracing the right wall with my hand for navigation and general stability, leg spasms and headaches forcing me into frequent breaks.

               Despair reaches me as the full situation dawns on me. I have my legs, but I’d begun to like my powers again. The way it filled the holes stabbed in every part of me, the way I felt close without feeling intrusive. The way I felt powerful and helpful in a way even a wheelchair couldn’t take from me.

               And now I’m alone again, feeling the vices of my power and my legs concurrently and the virtues of neither, pain throbbing through my shins and my skull, loneliness and fear pounding them further into me.

               A particularly sharp stab of pain zips up my leg, sending instinctive panic through me as I wait for them to give out, for the voices to come flooding in, and a sob catches in my throat. I force myself to swallow it, to work through the pain and the panic, to catch up with them and help them, to be as helpful as I could.

               My hand slips from the grime of the wall and I let  it fall to my side as I drop my shoulder into the wall and rest on that instead, deep breaths swelling in my chest, coolness seeping into my shoes and ironically numbing my toes.

               I want to leap out of my skin when someone’s hand slips into mine but thirty years on and off as a telepath have given me an innate sixth sense of someone else’s potential presence and I half-figured someone was coming my way despite their efforts to conceal their approach.

               “Raven,” I say when my breath is finally back in my lungs. “You’re alright. Good. Let’s go.”

               I take a few steps forward, my sister in tow, yanking her in whatever direction I demand as usual when she pulls back, nearly dislocating my arm. I smirk, satisfied with her insurrection. So she had learned to fight back. The one thing I admire about her absence.

               “Do my hands really feel that feminine?”

               Oops.   

               “Erm, Erik?”

               “Yeah.”

               “Ah.”

               I kind of want some dripping water or the sound of a sewer alligator clomping around to cover the magnitude of the silence pulsing through the tunnel, but there’s nothing except heavy breathing and the very noticeable fact that we are holding hands. Clenching hands. Now my fingers are going numb. Soon enough I won’t just be lame but a quadriplegic.

               “I came back for you.”

               It takes a moment for me to wonder whether that was what he meant to say above ground after I’d accused him of coming back merely to piss us all off, or whether he meant that in the literal sense, that just now he left Raven and Logan and Hank to come back for me.

               I decide it doesn’t matter, and I shift from our sweaty palms clamped together to lacing my fingers through his.

               I can almost hear his smile in the darkness. I turn to where I think he is, and as my eyes adjust his sharp features define the darkness instead of the other way around, and I realize that with Erik Lehnsherr at my side it doesn’t matter whether I have voices in my head or legs beneath my waist. We can go anywhere, together.

               “Let’s go,” he says, his grin making the tunnel light enough for us to gain purchase and take a few sure steps forward, before I hit a patch of grime, my right leg skidding forward as my left tries to compensate and flings behind me until I’m in an excruciating split, throwing myself to the side and pulling Erik with me until the two of us are lying in shit, grime, and something in between, both cursing my name.

               “You fell,” he groans, words echoing around us and pounding my idiocy into us multiple times as I reminisce about thirty seconds ago when I still had shreds of folly and innocence that led me to believe love could illuminate the whole world.

               “I fell,” I confirm, emotionless.

               How poetic.


	7. Chapter 7

After disentangling ourselves after our—my—gorgeously executed fall we slowly but surely gain confidence in our steps, charging through the darkness with nothing but stinging, clasped hands and deafening echoes as proof that the darkness isn’t a sign we’d died and ended up in a putrid, watery grave.

               We catch up with them shortly. Their silhouettes are outlined in a contour glow of soft light, making it impossible to see the worry etched on their faces but all the more easier to hear it ensconced in their voices.  

               “There’s light up ahead,” Hank says, his anxiety heightening twofold as it echoes. My first thought is to locate Raven, her lean figure settled against the wall, fingers worrying the ends of her hair.

               “Great,” Erik says, taking a step forward, dismissing Hank’s worry. I watch his knees buckle with physical stress and I reach out, grateful I can help, but he steps unknowingly out of my reach, catching himself and striding confidently forward to hide it. “I’d hate to miss any opportunity to view Logan’s beauty in all its glory.”

               I want to chuckle at how odd it sounds for an actual human name to cross Erik’s uptight lips, but Logan’s barking laugh beats me to it. “Keep it up all you want, Mags. Couple years from now and I’ll be the witty cocky bastard that everyone bows down to.”

               Erik holds up a middle finger. “One: I find that hard to believe.” He tosses up his left middle finger as he works his way over a pile of sewage and debris toward the light. “Two: we changed the future, remember? So it looks like I’m still Queen Bee, _bub._ ”

Erik sneers at Logan as Raven trails carefully after him. Logan leaps up over blocks of cement to catch up to Erik. “The only thing you’ll ever be Queen of is drama, Metalhead,” I hear him mutter in the distance, his whispers reverberating and tugging a smirk up onto my face.

               It slips off when I see Raven nearly lose her footing on a rock. “Alright, Lewis and Clark, hold up,” I say, taken aback that the nicknames slipped so easily off of my tongue. Erik and Logan’s desperation for hypocorism is diffusing into me. I try to shake off how disturbed I am at the fact.

               Erik doesn’t miss a beat and instead leaps ahead of it, kicking dirt in its face. He grabs Raven’s hand, sets her on her center of balance, and then shoves her down the other side in a way that she’ll fall safely into a puddle of water. At least I know we’re both hoping it’s water.

               “Move it, Pocahontas.”

               In the dim light Hank and I exchange haughty, disgusted glances. He looks at me for approval and I wave my hand out in an encouraging gesture. Hank cracks his knuckles in anticipation, savoring the moment, and turns around to deliver the blow. “It’s Sacajawea, you ignorant heathen.” I worry he won’t execute the physical aspect but his beastly grace flings him over the large pile of debris and allows him to sweep Raven, in an odd turn of events, back onto her feet. She grins at him, willing to be the damsel in distress for a split second before whipping out of his grasp to deliver a swift punch to Erik’s crotch, sending him reeling into the very same puddle of what I’m now certain is urine.

               I try to pull us back together, clenching my lips over a burst of derisive laughter. “Light in a sewer isn’t necessarily a good thing,” I say, gesturing to the burst of light. I start to explain when Raven gives me a double take after wringing out the bottom of her shirt.

               “Hold the fuck up, how are you walking?”

               I watch Erik’s neck snap back, worried he might get whiplash as his own stupidity catches up with him. “Yeah, hang on, how the hell…”

               I roll my eyes. “All so observant.” I wait for everyone to stop and finally listen to me. “I ran into Emma Frost—well I was sitting, and she…whatever, and she came up behind me and just as she was pledging her undying allegiance to the Great Magnet Lord, she pricked me in the back—”

               “Oh my,” Erik interjects.

“The back of my neck, you twat.” We hold a steady gaze, waiting for the other to burst into laughter. We settle for grinning widely at the other. “With a needle. It must be her own version of some serum, no matter how she procured it…for a moment I was immobilized without my powers. I had neither my legs nor my power but eventually my telepathy dissipated and I felt my legs again.”

               I decide to leave out that she succeeded in pushing me down the hole.

               “I got up and leapt down after you all immediately, and that’s when I found Erik.” When Erik found me.

               He narrows his eyes. “And you only just now considered it important to tell me that Emma’s switched sides?”

               I shrug. “I was trying to protect your…pride.” I’m about to climb up on top of the debris with them but I halt in my tracks and rebalance myself, a smile catching onto my lips as I deliberately shoot a look at Erik’s crotch, then flick a wink up at him.

               “Oh, Charles, please, not in front of the kids,” he fawns, slapping a hand over his pants and flamboyantly dismissing the air in front of him.

               My heart swells to a point I fear it will break. I barely even hear Raven and Hank and Logan feigning throwing up their innards at our gestures. The unadulterated joy at flirting with Erik fills me to bursting and I’m laughing uncontrollably at how weird it all is, how foreign it is while simultaneously familiar. I can’t get enough of the way he looks down at me, the glow tracing his figure in a way I’d like to follow with my own hands, so close to him I don’t have to see him I know he’s smiling, so close I just know he is.

               I don’t know where the light is coming from. I don’t know what will happen if we head toward it. And by God, I don’t know if the ghost of David Hume is going to come up and sweep this single glorious snapshot of a moment out from under my weak feet and insist it will never happen again, but I do know that right now Erik Lehnsherr is smiling down at me because he is happy and I can do nothing but smile back because I am happy, too. And right now that is enough to glue my sorry sad heart back together.

               Raven lurches back onto her feet after a particularly grandiose fabrication of vomiting her brains out, adding a flourish that could certainly hold a match to Erik’s claim of Drama Queen fame. “I’m going to ignore that that just happened because that was disgusting.”

               Erik snaps his neck in her direction. “Why, because it’s gay?”

               “N-no, just…well, you have to admit it’s weird, I mean…he…and you…and _me,_ I mean…” She looks at me in desperation. “Erik! Come on.”

               He turns away, crossing his arms childishly. “No. You aren’t forgiven.” She comes up behind him and starts to wrap her arms around him, but he shrugs her off and playfully shoves her backward. She searches him for facetiousness and finds it written in the smirk on his face. She steps forward, one last time, just in case, testing him, testing them, and when Erik pushes her away once again, the gesture is heavily laden with something else and my breath catches in my throat with the sight of it.

               Logan is busy staring at the tunnel’s ceiling, but Hank sees it. Raven sees it and so do I. Erik just knows it.

               It was an older sibling gesture. It was playful but firm. Whether he’s distancing her for my sake, for her sake, or even for his, I’ll never know, but it’s clear, and something heavy lifts off of my chest, and I see it off of theirs, too. I watch the way Erik turns away from Raven, and nods at me, jaw set with decisiveness. It manifests itself in the way Raven shrugs it off, stepping an inch closer to Hank and a bit further away from Erik.

               I suddenly imagine a pimply teenager standing behind Hank, Erik, and Raven, holding up one of those signs at an amusement park that tests how tall kids are to see if they can go on the ride, and the sign reads: “Three inches away: yep, they’re lovers! Four inches away, looks like platonic companionship, yessiree.”

               Goddamn. I’m really losing it.

               “Can we get on with this?” Logan says, the only one emotionally distant enough to remember the task at hand. Erik and Hank skid their way down the other side of the mountain of rubble as Raven fluidly steps down. I stumble up and manage my way over, heat burning in my cheeks when I notice Erik shooting me frequent looks to check my progress.

               The light ahead stems from a transition in the tunnel; the dank, concrete walls meld into a large, open room, white with incandescent light flooding from lights above, emulating a sense of natural light without any windows. I’m admiring the engineering of the cavernous room when Erik makes a noise of recognition and points at something.

               I follow his gaze and see a television in the corner. I look for signs of use. Passing Erik as I step forward, I brush my fingers absently along his side as I pass, whether to let him know I’m paying attention or whether it was just a gesture, I won’t know.

               No dust rests around the rim of the television which indicates recent placement, but something feels off. Of course something is off, we’re wandering in a sewer and came across a newly constructed room. But I’m half-expecting the television to explode when it bursts to life, sending me reeling back into Erik’s arms, bracing for my fall, my heart leaping into my throat.

               Something that resembles a clown grins across the screen, and I blink hard. The picture comes more into focus and the person on the screen more resembles a man with a poor sense of hairstyle and a wicked grin that could put Erik’s to shame than a clown. Meretriciously designed text slowly starts to fade into focus behind him as he stares down at us devilishly, and we fall into line, squinting to read it.

               “Mu…Murder…Murderworld?” Raven blurts after the text had come into fruition but before the realization had solidified into our minds.

               “That can’t be good,” Logan responds, equally as stupid.

               “No, no, I went to a Murderworld over in L.A. once. It was quite pleasant,” Erik says lightly. I find myself more irritated at his sarcasm than worried at the situation and I try to shake off both. I quickly try to flicker through the years of training we had, memories of everything that’s happened, patterns of strategy in Cuba, in Washington, the smaller conflicts in between, scanning through every piece of information I can, my vision a blur as I whip my gaze around the room, looking for defenses, weapons, escapes…

               A furious, blinding knife slices through my whirring mind and I’m left gasping at my knees.

               _No, that won’t do, Charles Xavier. That wouldn’t be any fun. Wait until we’ve started the game._

I knock Emma Frost out of my mind to the best of my ability and shake off the worry that she’s still planted in my mind furtively. Winded, I splutter, “Get back the way we came. Get out!”

               I hear it before I see it but it’s clear the rock slide outside was carefully planted and a large grinding noise accompanies the slew of rocks as it blockades us in the room. Slamming my fist on the cool, sleek ground, I curse our stupidity and straighten up, glaring at the screen.

               The title card for Murderworld dissipates to a shot of the clown man, Emma, and two other people, a man and a woman, all grinning condescendingly. I fight the weak urge to shudder away, desperate for any upper hand possible, even if it’s appearing cool and collected when I’m not.

               “Welcome, friends, to Murder—”

               “Look, clown, we—I—have dealt with crap like this thousands of times, and while the villainous monologues and other nonsense like that thrills me to no end, I’d rather cut right to the chase. Where are the other mutants?” Logan tosses his arms up. “Let me guess, we have to play your little game. So get on with it.”

               Clown Man doesn’t even flinch. “Oh, he’s rude. I’ll remember that for later.”

               Emma leans over to whisper something in his ear and my mind searches desperately for something to focus on. The room is so clean and so empty except for the television there’s no escaping from it. Digging our way through the rocks seems to be the most obvious choice but not the simplest, especially if we’re short on time. I scan for wires behind the TV but they’re hidden well behind the screen, and I imagine the amount of orchestration this might have required, how profoundly meticulous and skilled to make this room alone. I find myself smirking at the genius.

               “I call myself Arcade,” Clown Man—Arcade—says. I shoot a look at Erik, conveying, _Oh look, he’s got a cute pet name, too._

Even without telepathy, Erik turns his head toward me, irritated with my unspoken comment, flicking his eyes down. I follow his look and see him pulling a middle finger out of his pocket. I fight away a chuckle and look back at the screen.

               “You’re our thief.”

               He doesn’t look surprised.

               “Charles Xavier. The clever one.”

               I let out a bark of laughter, still careful to play the arrogantly calm card. “I prefer ‘Oh Grandiose Liege,’ actually.” I sneer at him to add to the effect.

               It’s his turn to laugh, and the screeching noise that bursts out of his tight-lipped grin makes my insides flip. “Calm down there, Charlie. No need to try and dominate me. Are you like that with everyone, or just your sister?”

               Raven tenses up next to me. I brush her fingers lightly with mine to calm her down. So he’s done his research. Or rather, Emma has. Or one of his two useless assistants lurking in the background.

               “They’re not useless,” Emma says, white teeth flashing in a terse smile. For a moment I feel stupid for saying that out loud before I realize. She’s gotten good. Years ago it would have been obvious when she was sifting through my mind; now it seems effortless. My heart pounds with fear but I decide to focus on other things. “With their help we’ve prepared quite a show for all of you.”

               “And that is?” Hank speaks up, chest puffing out a bit too far. I mentally applaud him for trying to play the confident card but when he steps forward and trips on his unlaced sneakers and staggers a bit I can’t help but wince when Arcade laughs at him. Erik even lets out a huff of laughter, blowing his bangs up. I’m entranced by the way he reassures me with a fleeting wink until Emma ruins it.

               “He still loves you, you know.”

               Oh shit, God no. “No, I…what?”

               “I know.” Erik shrugs. He looks over at me and I force my gaze at Emma, hoping for a sudden mutation to manifest itself in laser eye beams so I can blow up the TV and shut her up. The room becomes unbearably hot and I’m suddenly hoping the walls will melt away so I can sprint away on my legs with all their glory.

               “Alright, alright. Han Solo and Leia, please calm down.” Logan points at both of us, condemning…what? Our awkwardness? Who’re Han Solo and Leia? Logan suddenly bursts into laughter, doubling over for a moment before drawing himself back up, as if sharing some secret joke with himself. “Oh yeah. Not yet. Anyway, can we get on with this?”

               Arcade leaps up from his position on a throne made of colorfully painted human bones as if he’d been waiting for someone to question him. “Sorry. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a while now…it took a while to procure various supplies, but once I had them, it didn’t take long. I’m incredibly handy with tinkering, if I do say so myself. My assistants helped excavate this location, and I picked up a very disillusioned Miss Frost along the way. She had quite a few juicy details about your little gang she was eager to share.” His heinous laughter bursts through the static and sends us all into fake-gagging.

               Erik looks like he’s swallowed a mouthful of sewer water as he addresses Emma. “You…”

               She shrugs, bored. “Freelancing. Mr. Neurotic over here doesn’t care about money, just making fools like you suffer. I like that.” Her façade of boredom quickly dissipates and anger flares across her cool eyes. “You killed Shaw, and I was left with nothing. I could’ve ripped all of you apart from the inside out but this is a lot more interesting, don’t you think? I would’ve gotten you back sooner, but you idiots managed to screw things up for yourselves up better than I could’ve imagined. Props to you, Erik.”

               He stiffens. Emma sucks on her teeth like she can taste his sense of defeat.

               The silence only lasts a few seconds before Arcade jumps back as the main feature, desperate to be the one to crush us. Another pulse of terror sweeps through me, my fingers losing their control and beginning to quiver. In my desperation I look around a few more times, ready to grasp at anything, any shred of hope. But I always end up back at the television, staring at them from behind their static barricade like cowards, impossible to defeat by force and our position leaving it futile to try and outsmart them.

               Perhaps it’s best to play along. I turn and look down the row of us, giving as reassuring a nod as possible. It’s returned with a few weak smiles and feeble stares. A small bit of fear is replaced with the trust that we are now a team, that we will face any struggle together.

               Something itches at the back of my mind suddenly and I shift away from Erik, shaking it off. He steps after me and I feel suffocated by his movement. The fear has taken the best of my focus and my vision blurs with anxiety, everything suddenly pressing in from all sides as Arcade’s snickering fills the room, magnified to the point where it’s bursting in my skull, and I see Erik absently reaching to rub his temples, and realization slams into me so hard I’m shouting to overcome it but then the floor has dropped beneath my feet and I am weightless, falling, and then swallowed in darkness.

               The jolt rips up my legs, the pain arching my back as I scream a string of expletives.

               “Holy shit,” I moan, rolling over into a fetal position, any pretense of appearing calm and collected slipping quickly away. “My back.” I claw at the ground, which is soft, and warm. And oddly shaped. It feels like an arm.

               “I love the groping and everything, but we’ve seriously got to stop meeting like this.”

               Relief floods through me until there’s no room for pain or fear. “Erik,” I gasp, clenching his arm with my hand, feeling for the rest of him with my other until I’m fumbling to grasp his hand in mine and it’s the most uncomfortable position but I’m so desperate to cling to something solid in the disorienting darkness I clench even harder, until he’s muttering in German and I know I’m hurting him.

               “Sorry, sorry,” I say, feeling awkward and prying myself off of him.

               He doesn’t fight to pull me back into an embrace like I wanted, but after I straighten up, working the aches in my legs, I hear him struggling to get up and he habitually reaches to me, tugging on my pant leg first and then working his way up until his hand, arm, is thrown around my shoulders, leaning on me for support, rather than the other way around, and it’s so natural it feels like it’s only been ten minutes since we’ve last done this, rather than ten years. My heart leaps with a bizarre combination of abject horror and love and my mind’s whirring so terribly from Emma sticking into it to get Erik and I to shift over and stand over the trapdoor in the floor I’m afraid I’ll faint.

               We stand there a minute, Erik patting me on the back like we’ve just woken up drunk from a frat party, me using every ounce of my focus to not pitch sideways, to stand here and be Erik’s rock, to be for him what he used to be for me.

               “So,” he says, still breathing heavily. “Murderworld.” I feel him staring at me, feel the grin pull his muscles taut against the darkness. “I do hope they’re hiring. I’d kill for a job here.”

               A moment.

               “Erik.”

               “Yeah, buddy?”

               “Make another joke like that on my watch and I’ll murder your world.”

               “Was that a genuine death threat or sexual innuendo?”

               “Both.”

               His wink flashes through the darkness with an onslaught of laughter.

               “I knew it.”

               I’m ready to fire back, not ready to let him win, and I’m pulling away, mouth ablaze, when the lights burst on, illuminating what might be the last sight I ever rest my eyes on.

               And my last words were sexual innuendo.

               RIP Erik Lehnsherr, who might just die laughing.


	8. Chapter 8

As I blink fervently, my eyes adjusting to the light, I run through all the memories I have stored in my head and try vehemently to convince myself that my life wasn’t totally lame. There was that time we went to the city and Raven impersonated Frank Sinatra. That other time that Alex and I went for a joy ride in one of my father’s old cars and I was able to get us out of a speeding ticket, and I was the cool adult supervision for once.

                Everything with Erik was an adventure.

                Let’s just make this one more.

                I swallow down on as much hope as possible before locking into survival mode. This time four televisions glare down at us, each with a different image. The one to the far right harbors an image of a disoriented Hank helping Raven to her feet in a room much like ours. How kind of them to provide us with visions of each other’s deaths. The one next to that shows yet another room, except that one contains a rampaging Logan, who’s slashing at walls with his bony claws. The next shows an image of four young men and women cowering in the center of the room, their gaze fixed above them, no doubt on televisions displaying our images. I have half a mind to wave to them.

                The last television displays a countdown, starting at twenty seconds.

                I turn to Erik to start in on a strategy, though something tells me we’ll have to think on our feet when the clock hits zero.

                I reel backward when I see he’s been standing very close the whole time, staring.

                “Sorry. I like to watch your eyes zip around at everything and know you’re coming up with something. It’s quite reassuring and it makes me think maybe I won’t die after all.”

                I work my jaw, unsure of how to break the news. “Yeah, erm…”

                He blinks. “No plan?”

                I shake my head. He shrugs habitually like every time he makes that gesture a puppy is born. Though I’m not sure he likes dogs.

                “Do you like dogs?” I say, mind whirring.

                “I like puppy dog eyes,” he says, staring into mine. I shake it off. Stop trying to be pretty. You’re supposed to be clever.

                The clock hits ten. I look to Erik, who shuts his eyes in a rare moment of focus. I wonder if he’s feeling for metal, and I snap my gaze to the televisions.

                The plastic-coated televisions. But still, there must be some sort of metal…

                The television’s images start to blur as Erik raises his hands.

                “Erik, not yet. Perhaps they have them up there for a reason. We need to be sure Hank, Raven, and Logan make it out alright. And I’m guessing our actions might be of consequence to the kids in that room.” I point.

                Three seconds.

                “Charles, it might be our only chance.”

                It can’t be. My mind snaps into clarity as the clock hits zero, an inherent buzz of adrenaline bursting through me. “Occam’s Razor.”

                The countdown falls to darkness as I’m suddenly thrown into the air, chest slamming into the ceiling before a quick descent downward. I do a pathetic barrel roll in the air and see that the floor is moving. Erik reacts quickly and manages to break my fall with his arms but I still slam onto the ground.

                Now he’s thrown up and I watch the mechanism beneath it. Plastic, and hydraulics. Pumps and pressure. No metal required. Arcade had only stolen metal wires and those are too insignificant to help us.

                We are both rendered useless, except for our bodies. I skid to the right and manage to jam my arms out and break his fall, though a lot less gracefully. I feel blood start to trickle out of my nose and throw my hand up to my face as I check the room for another threat, any sense of pattern.

                Erik reels to his feet. “Occam’s Razor? What the hell is this, Philosophy 101? Xavier, do you think I ever paid attention to—”

                Death by his own addiction to getting the last word. As he stepped forward to condemn my reference, the tile beneath him flings him up, and my sore arms are left to catch him yet again. Out of desperation I fling us to a tile that’s already projected us upward.

                As I’m musing over whether they’re pressurized and programmed to move based on weight, a tile across the room bursts upward, harmless.

                Erik’s eyes light up with recognition and he leaps to the side, knocking us both over seconds before the tile next to him shoots upward. We scramble to our feet.

                “How’d you feel that?” I try and staunch the blood flow from my nose as he rubs his aching arms.

                “You can feel it shift,” he gasps through labored breathing. “Not a strategy, but it’s a start.”

                My first guess is that the tiles are alternating, the front side of the room then the back side of the room. But it’s too simple. Sure enough, we enact my theory and I’m thrown into the ceiling again, collapsed on Erik with what I’m sure are bruised ribs.

                As I convalesce for a few seconds I scan the room, despair filling me with every second, the desire to turn and watch and see if Raven, Hank, and Logan are alright.

                Each tile shoots up with a swish and then a loud thud as it slams back in.

                Swish, thud.

                “Charles,” Erik says, on the other side of the room, hopefully using his brains and looking for the easiest, best solution as dictated by next lesson’s Occam’s Razor theory. Can’t wait to use this story on my students. “Charles, the room with the people we’ve never seen before is quickly filling up with water. We have to get to them.”

                Time constraint, then. Lovely.

                I can’t talk, can’t think, can barely move through the ache coursing through me as I clench my teeth and glare at the room, watching the vivacious ripple, waiting for a break, anything, a pattern, a way to beat it. It’s a game, I remind myself. A game you can beat. I’d never lost at games, especially not a game of—

                Chess.

                I burst with incredulous laughter and whip around on my heels to explain to Erik when I lose my balance and fall face-first into tile shooting rapidly upward. Fortunately it only catches my torso and I’m left flying back into the wall rather than straight down, but I’m left breathless and unable to warn Erik, who runs over before dancing erratically away from what he senses is a moving tile.

                “Chess,” I manage to gasp as the back half of the room takes its turn, so to speak. “Chess, the tiles are chess, each one that moves is like a piece moving, notice the flipping between the two halves of the room…”

                Erik catches on almost immediately. “Then who’s winning?”

                “Doesn’t matter, so long as we predict the next move, after we quickly recall the past moves already taken, the pieces that might already be gone.” He yanks me up onto my feet and we race over to the back while the front half shifts.

                I watch two tiles subsequently sweep in a diagonal movement. “See?” I point, biting my lip as I double over in pain. Erik nods.

                “Bishop,” he says, in awe. “Damn, Xavier, still a nerd after all these years.”

                I manage a weak grin. “Now we have to think of all that we’ve seen, any sense of what pieces might be missing. I reckon we’re about ten minutes into the game. If the players—or whatever—are clever, then it’s safe to assume the center of the board might be safest. An idiot wouldn’t put his pieces out in the open like that this early on in the game.”

                Erik looks lost. “Ha, yeah, only idiots would do that.”

                “I didn’t say you weren’t an idiot, lovely.”

                He grabs my hand, squeezing a bit too hard in retribution for my last comment, and yanks me to the center of the board. The move bought us a few seconds.

                “Alright, now think, quickly. What have we already seen, what pieces might be missing?” I shut my eyes, trusting Erik to keep us safe, and start to sift through the tiles that have already chucked us into the ceiling. I try not to let hopelessness swell into me, try to drown out the sounds of the captured mutants, well…drowning.

                “Charles, I really think we should figure out who’s winning, maybe if we follow their strategy…”

                I shake my head. “No, Erik. We figure out what pieces are missing and take their place while predicting the next move and survive the game. Someone’s got to win.”

                I get distracted in my musings and wish Erik could just control plastic instead of just metal. I’m livid with them for doing this, for exploiting our weaknesses, for giving us no Razor with which to slice away the stupid ideas, for giving us no pathway of deduction…

                Weaknesses.

                A blur of my own words flits through my mind as Erik guesses at a move and shifts us over one tile. _An idiot wouldn’t put his pieces out in the open like that…stupid ideas…no, Erik…_

And Erik’s. _Damn, Xavier, still a nerd after all these years._

Oh. I’m an arrogant bastard.

                But just because I always have been doesn’t mean I always will be.

                “Erik,” I say, biting down my instinct to follow my instincts. “Erik, you’re right.” He nearly falls out of shock and he pulls me, leaping four tiles ahead as the four behind us rip up after our heels.

                “Charles Xavier, would you mind saying that again?”

                “No, goddammit, now who the hell’s winning?”

                He tries to explain but slips up, his back smashing into the ceiling before he gets a word out. I catch him seconds later, my eyes already scanning the board.

                The only logical explanations for the last move are a rook capturing something or a pawn moving forward. It’s rare for a rook to only move one tile, so it must have been a pawn. I step to the side, testing my theory, and a diagonal move overtakes what I believe must have been a pawn. I drag us backward to the back end, where the pawn used to be. We have a few seconds before the queen will most likely move toward us to put the king in check.

                Check.

                Some piece moves invisibly across the board, planting itself in front of us and what must be the king. I glance backward, holding Erik up as he moans, and then turn forward.

                “Come on, Erik. Come on. A minute longer.” As I surge forward, stomping heavily on my weak path built of blind faith and hope, I flick my gaze up to the screen. I see flashes of blue, indicating movement from both Hank and Raven, I hear a loud expletive from Logan, and a pool of water putting the kids knee deep on the last television.

                With as much confidence and stability as I can muster, I prop us both up on what I hope is the right tile. I clear my throat and throw away any pretense of dignity. I feel like an idiot when I face forward, look up at the camera and then back at my invisible opponent, proclaiming, “Check.”

                Swish, thud, and the room falls still.

                Serenity sweeps over me and I’m letting Erik go, trusting him to hold himself up as I let the quietude swallow me whole, the white light shifting from violently bright to soft illumination, less hard on the eyes. A sense of great focus pins itself in my chest and my breath becomes measured. I shut my eyes and the room appears in the back of my eyelids and I know Arcade has realized his mistake. Or perhaps he built this room with a chink on purpose. Chess isn’t our weakness, it’s our strength. I keep  my eyes shut and in my mind the pieces and all of their moves fall into consummate alignment and I’m sifting through them until it’s clear what remains and what’s left to be done.

                “Watch the king,” Erik breaths, his voice barely a whisper as he, too, realizes our triumph.

                I can’t help it, and I turn my head slightly so he can see my smirk with a tinge of arrogance. _“You_ watch the king.”

                While my steps are clumsy my intentions are absolute and it takes me two moves to align myself perfectly, their king slipping out of check and then calculatedly back in.

                “Who’s the king, now?” I shout back to Erik, who grins and shakes his head at me. I gesture for him to make his own move and we fall in rhythmic tandem as he, too, stands in perfect position.

                “You’re acting as a knight,” he points out. I shrug.

                “Checkmate.”

                The tile that I had guessed—had known—was king depresses into the floor, gone. A ladder appears in its place and our next step is clear. We’re not done with this yet.

                We both check the televisions behind us, the water at their waists, the rest of us still alive.

                Erik peers down the hole and kicks at the wobbly ladder. “After you, Your Highness.”

                “You first, peon.”

                He chuckles at his shoes, kneeling down to get in a better position to clamber in.

                “Anything for you,” he says, and for a fleeting moment I hear a bit more sincerity than I do facetiousness, and just as it starts to return to normal my heartbeat skips erratically. I don’t let on as he shoots one last grin at me before descending down the ladder.

                “I know.”

***

                When we reach the bottom, I immediately look to the televisions. The television that was the countdown clock in the last room bears an image of Emma and Arcade watching their own monitors with unadulterated glee. They pay us no attention and we’re given a few seconds to observe the others.

                I lock on to Hank and Raven, expecting to see them battling the chess room or a room bearing resemblance to ours. But as I see something unfamiliar I realize that their weaknesses are not arrogance or powerlessness and their strength isn’t chess strategy. I allow myself a few seconds to watch them struggle as I think of how I would test them, how I would exploit their weakness.

                Raven? Uncertain. Insecure. Hank, as well. Hank is brilliant but Raven is still clever.

                Their game seems simple. They’re both seated at a table with four buttons facing each of them. From what I can see it’s a bit of a puzzle. Neither of them can see the other, no matter what they do. Neither of them can press the same button at the same time or they’ll get shocked in what seems to be increasingly painful intervals. I’m guessing that all four buttons have to be pressed in a specific pattern in order for them to get out of the room, but when they guess wrong they get shocked as well.

                It’s starting to seem hopeless when I see that they can talk to each other through microphones.

                “Raven, Raven. Just calm down. Let me figure it out and then you can follow.”

                “Why, because I’m the stupid, emotionally inept one? No, I’ve got this.” Both reach out and confidently slam the button furthest to the right and we all wince as they leap back in pain.

                Ah. Exploiting the trust issues and the lack of confidence. I hope she won’t be so stubborn she’ll get them killed.

                My urge to shout out to the two of them to try and help in some distant way dissipates when I hear my name. “Xavier! Prof, hey!” It takes me a minute to find Logan’s game. He’s chained by both his wrists and both his ankles to the floor, facing a large screen separate of the four televisions. “It’s a goddamn trivia game. Do you think I know this shit?”

                “I don’t think I’d ever accuse you of knowing anything, no,” I say dryly, trying not to be amused by his game.

                “Well, you better help out, because if I don’t get out, we’re dead, and they’re dead. When I get out of here, I’m slicing Clown Face’s brains into the walls.”

                Of course he will. That’s why his challenge requires patience and thought. Dear God. We’re all dead.

                “Ow, Jesus Christ, Raven, would you just be patient and trust me?”

                “Shut the hell up, Hank, you don’t know everything!”

                “Why in the name of all things holy would I ever need to know the Pythagorean Theorem?!”

                The despair fills up the room and I revert to my own knowledge as a source of comfort, something solid I can turn in on and use as a sense of security. “A-squared plus B-squared equals C-squared, Logan. Rudimentary.”

                “It’s ‘elementary,’” Erik says in his overly snobbish British accent as Logan mimics my words, one of the chains snapping off of his wrists as his answer registers as correct.

                “Enjoying the show?” Arcade snickers and I look away, worry pounding through me as the water rises on one of the televisions. We wasted too much time. As hard as it is I have to trust Raven and Hank and, yes, even Logan, to get themselves through the rest. Erik and I have to focus on our own problems.

                As the thought crosses my mind a plexiglass barrier slams down between Erik and I, shutting off my better half and the last shred of sanity I had, despair making me weak at my knees. The television is on Erik’s side but I can still hear Arcade’s voice.

                “Hoo hoo, time for some real fun.” As I’m pondering his interpretation of the word ‘fun,’ the room springs to life, light bulbs lining the room I hadn’t noticed before lighting up with different colors, shedding a pool of nauseatingly colorful light across the room. A neon sign lights up in the corner, the words ‘Lover’s Quarrel’ flickering lazily above Erik’s head.

                Arcade claps his hands, Emma’s lip curling up in sick amusement. “I’ve always wanted to be a game show host!” Shit. “The rules are simple. I’ll ask a question, and you write not just your own answer, but the answer you believe your partner will write. Telepathy would come in handy right now, huh, Charlie?”

                I swallow hard, looking over at Erik, who raises his eyebrows not in apathy but in an odd sense of relief I feel myself. Shouldn’t be too bad, but I knit my eyebrows together in worry. It’s been ten years.

                “No cheating, or there will be retribution. You both must guess the other’s answer in order to get a point. If either one of you guesses incorrectly, the other will get shocked. Non-writing hands on the panel in front of you, please. Don’t think about removing it.”

                I step up to the podium up toward the front of the room, a green panel lighting up, a faint outline of a handprint fading in. I place my left hand on it, my right hand ready to type a command into the highly advanced computer in front of me. It could even transmit a signal up to a screen in Arcade’s room. Too bad he’s a sick bastard. He’s a genius.

                “You need three points to get to the next room. Ready?”

                Erik shoots me one last glance, a naturally reassuring grin, and I just know some part of him is enjoying the game show thing. I roll my eyes to emanate the façade that I’m alright, too, but my fingers begin to shake. I don’t want to hurt Erik. Do I know Erik? Does he know me?  
                “First question.” Arcade looks down at a card in front of him and I take a quick look up at the monitor displaying the room filling up with water. It’s up to their chests. My heart leaps in my throat and I almost miss the question, almost miss the way the countdown clock starts at twenty seconds.

                “What’s his favorite color?”

                Forget Erik’s favorite color. I don’t even know my favorite color. I stare a moment longer at Arcade, cackling with Emma Frost. I freeze up for a second before realizing I can’t waste my time figuring it out. My instinct will most likely be his. My instinct is to look over at him, to hold onto that reassuring grin he saves for me.

                But I can’t. I shut my eyes, and the blue insignia on my favorite Oxford sweatshirt flits through my mind. Another flash of blue, one that makes my heartbeat slow for a moment, so familiar and kind, so closely associated with my sister. The blue eyes of my father, the ones that are harbor so much strength, so close to Erik’s.

                I snap my eyes open and type it in quickly, glancing up at the clock. Twelve seconds to guess Erik’s. It’s so tempting to look over I bite my lip and tip my head in the other direction, hairs prickling the back of my neck. I can’t hurt him.

                My first guess is black. He loves that bloody turtleneck of his, loves the way he looks in it. So damn handsome and doesn’t he know it. But it can’t be black. Black is enigmatic, dark, all things Erik, but too plain, too simple, as wrong for Erik as it is apt. I mash my palms into my eyes. Think, think.

                _“There was never much color in my life when I was younger. All I remember is yellow stars, everywhere. I remember my mother telling me not to let them ruin anything, not my spirit, or whatever. And she said, by God, if I liked yellow, she’d hit me if I ever claimed any other color as my favorite. She was a tough one.”_

I thank my line of genetics for an incredible memory and pound it into the keyboard with a second to spare. A loud buzz sends me leaping in my skin, another laugh bursting through the speaker. I ignore it and allow myself a quick look at Erik. I want to mouth my answer, but I worry about the ramifications, and settle for a curt nod before turning back to the television, heat throbbing through me in sick anticipation for a shock of pain.

                Arcade yawns. “Both correct. One point.” A small bit of relief works its way through a labyrinth of anxiety. “Next question: what’s his favorite memory?”

                The clock ticks at twenty, and my mind is off, tugged back suddenly by Erik’s outburst.

                “Bullshit, that’s way too general!”

                I manage to bite my own tongue as Arcade slams something on his motherboard, Erik reeling back in pain, sucking in air to keep from crying out. The clock hits eighteen seconds, and I’m on the verge of a panic attack.

                I have to be careful. Not just a favorite memory but a favorite memory I’ve shared with Erik. That narrows it down a bit. My gaze whips around the room, looking for anything to elicit nostalgia but the bright lights blind me and I’m left staring down at the green blinking cursor awaiting my answer, my knuckles white against panel.

                Our first kiss? That wasn’t it, too awkward, though pleasant all the same. Reuniting? No, I punched him in the face the first time and the second I found myself wanting to.

                I need to relax, I need to calm down, I can’t do anything when I’m flustered.

                A point between rage and serenity.

                I beam to myself over the sudden revelation, typing furiously. I whip my gaze up at the clock and my heart sinks at the signal of six seconds. I took way too long.

                My fingers tremble over the keys and I lose two more seconds. My last hope is that his is the same as mine. I type my exact words in over again, missing the last letter as the clock takes away my ability to type.

                I prop my shaking arms up on the podium, every instinct screaming at me to rip my hand away from the panel, to scream at Erik to do the same. I failed him.

                It’s obvious with the way Arcade’s toothy grin splits his pale face. “Oho, oopsies,” he sings, making a big show of hovering his hand over the button. As he opens his mouth again I decide it’d be more painful if Erik gets shocked on my account. Yet I’m not overly thrilled with his next words.

                “This is too good. Charles, way to nail down Erik’s warm and fuzzy feelings, but tough luck, Magnets. Reuniting with his sister wasn’t his favorite memory.”

                Reuniting with my sister? What?

                My confusion blurs away as a pulse of agony zips up my left arm, and I wish I have the resolve of Erik as a cry spills over my cracked lips. Out of the corner of my watery eyes I see Erik averting his gaze, ashamed. I want to reach to him, to see past the blurry glass and see him for real, his image defined and sure, just like him, but I’m left with watery outlines.

                I clench the tears back into my eyes and face forward. We still need two more questions, and the water is almost to their shoulders. I have no time to see but I can only imagine what Logan, Raven, and Hank are facing.

                Arcade recovers from his giggling as my arm throbs with aftershock. “Okeydokey. Next question: on a scale of one to ten, how good is he in bed?”

                Part of me wants to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment and another part of me wants to laugh and the last part of me wants to whoop in triumph. Wrong question, mate. I wish I could see the look on Erik’s face, but I still grin from ear to ear, ignoring the clock completely and allowing the memory to swell through my head.

                _“Well,” Erik says, still trying to catch his breath. “How was it?”_

_I turn over to face him, breathing heavily, smirking. “What, on a scale of one to ten? Or do you want an adjective? Is there a suggestions box?”_

_He laughs and even though I don’t think I could get any hotter another wave of warmth sweeps through me. “You’re a numbers guy. Scale of one to ten.”_

_I turn to stare up at the ceiling, my smirk augmenting into a wild grin. “Four.”_

_“What? Are you kidding? Goddamn, I was going to give you a six, and that was with the crying!”_

_Now we’re both dying. “I wasn’t crying!” I pound my forehead into his bare chest. “I was bloody laughing!”_

_“Laughing? Who does that? Why were you laughing?”_

_“Because you’re only a four.”_

_We ache with laughter. “Fuck you,” he manages._

_“Is that a four fuck you, or a greater than four fuck you?”_

_He smiles at me and I smile back. “Let’s see.”_

I jam the answers in so fast into the keyboard out of pure euphoria I’m afraid I’ve broken the machine, but the clock hits zero and Arcade looks dissatisfied at our unexpected solidarity. I want to tell him it was his own fault he gave us a one in tenth chance of guessing each one correctly, but I swallow my words into my smile.

                Him and Emma sneer down at us, but I barely see it because Erik and I are smiling long and hard at each other before Arcade clears his throat. “Fine. Two points. Last question, shouldn’t be easy.”

                I clench and unclench my right fist, clinging desperately to the triumph from last round.

                I unclench my fist and it slips away easily with Arcade’s maliciously piercing gaze, the gaze of a man who’s just won.

                “What does he hate most about you?”


	9. Chapter 9

I want to ask him if we can add a qualifier, what _doesn’t_ he hate most about me, because that would be a much easier question than the one he asked.

                But I suppose that’s why he asked it.

                “Oh, and one last thing Emma decided to add last minute, seeing as I’ve forgotten why we’re in Murderworld. You get five questions total, and if you don’t have three points by then, you both die! Whippee!” He waves his hands to gesture that we should proceed.

                My heart flips as my mind begins to whir. I sift as quickly as possible through hours upon hours of conversations, arguments, debates, times I dove wrongly into his mind, searching for anything. My first guess would be my arrogance. Erik always mocks me in an argument when I start to speak with condescension. He hates when I act like I’m smarter than him even though Erik’s got his own sense of sagacity that renders him intelligent. And I hate the way he often doesn’t respond, or uses such brevity I’m left with nothing to respond with.

                But I know it’s something more profound than that.

                Fifteen seconds.

                Maybe he hates the way I can’t see his side of things. But I can, of course I can, of course I don’t trust the idiots in power to treat us like anything other than freaks of nature, scientific experiments. Yet I see hope where he doesn’t and we can’t agree. Surely he knows it. Surely he doesn’t hate me for it.

                Eleven seconds.

                I think as recently as possible, why he wanted to leave me freezing in the pond, why he left me, why, why does he hate me…

                Or does he hate me? The question isn’t why he hates me, it’s what he hates most about me.

                Maybe Erik doesn’t hate me at all.

                “ _He still loves you.”_

_“I know.”_

                But does he? My throat runs dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

                Erik isn’t going to guess right, Erik is going to write down everything, because he thinks I hate him, he thinks I hate the way I see him smiling at me in the morning even though he thinks it’ll hurt his manly image, the way he listens to everyone like they’re the most important person in the world at that moment…

                Erik’s going to guess wrong.

                Seven seconds. I’m not even going to get a guess.

                And yet here I am blaming Erik. And suddenly I know. I know both of them.

                _“Erik, you’re right.”_

_“Charles Xavier, would you mind saying that again?”_

_“Reuniting with his sister wasn’t his favorite memory.”_

My fingers hover over the keys with four seconds left. My heart pounds as I start to type, my fingers twitching toward the enter button, hesitant, worried…I am scared. I am scared, not of Erik’s mistake but of hurting him the way he hurt me. I must take a leap of blind faith, and I must trust. Trust him, and trust myself, in a way I haven’t in ten years.

Because love is giving someone the power to hurt you and trusting them not to.

The power to forgive them when they do.

I slam the enter button with more conviction than I’ve ever mustered before as the clock hits zero, the sound freezing me in place, incapable of turning to look at Erik, look anywhere other than Arcade’s emotionless stare. It’s quiet but we all know the truth. Even if Erik and I get it wrong and receive another question, it’ll be too late to save those who are drowning.

The stakes are higher than a small shock to the hand. Than the trust between Erik and I that is fragile but present nonetheless.

I bet Arcade didn’t expect I’d be getting out of this more in love with Erik Lehnsherr than I was at the beginning, let alone get out of this at all.

After a long, tense moment he finally moves from his statuesque position in his chair, turning to a screen displaying our answers. Emma leans over and whispers something in his ear before drawing away and smiling venomously at Erik. I still can’t bring myself to look at him, especially not if he’s going to get hurt.

Arcade considers something, and I absently tap my foot. Every second he wastes another drop of water hits that room.

“They’re not identical, which I would have liked…but they’re close enough. I wouldn’t normally be this lenient, but…you are under time constraint, and I’d like to see if you chuckleheads can get past the final room.” He runs his fingers through his comically orange hair, sighing before pushing a button like it’s painful to do so. I flinch, waiting for a shock, but the plexiglass slides up from between us and the door opposite us opens.

We both hurry forward, awkwardly bumping into each other as we try to slip through the doorway. My back is pressed up against the frame, and I force myself to meet his gaze, softer and less pained than I had imagined.

“Erik,” I breathe, catching my breath for what feels like the first time in the past ten minutes.

“The way you don’t trust me,” he blurts. I nod almost immediately, catching his extended hands in mine, grasping hard.

“The way you think I hate you, even though you act otherwise.”

He suddenly bursts into laughter, and I follow suit. “I didn’t phrase it as beautifully as that.” Erik’s laugh continues to fill me up. “Maybe my grammar is what made him hesitate to give us the point.”

I shake with uncontrollable laughter, unsure of what else to say, when Erik nods to the next room, pulling us both in as the door shuts definitively behind us.

“I can’t believe you thought I was a four.” He shoves me away before pulling me into a headlock, and I’m in awe of the way he’s what feels like a brother, a best friend, and a lover, all at once, and it threatens to overwhelm me.

“Erik, I was joking, calm down. We can test my rating later.” It slips out with such ease I’m appalled, clamping my mouth shut. Shit.

I glance over at him, and he glances at me, and I feel like two teenagers at prom passively trying to invite the other to get on the dance floor with them. I know he’s not into feelings and other petty human things but I have to say it and he has to hear it and he has to know and accept it. Three words.

“I…” The words stick in my throat, and it’s not until then I know I’m wrong. That’s not what he needs to hear. Erik knows I love him but he doesn’t know something else. He needs to hear something else. I love him, and by extension…

“I forgive you.”

He pauses, then gives a stiff nod. I say it again. “I forgive you. And I love you. And I know you know that but I need you to know that I forgive you, too. And there are things that need time but I took ten years to think about it and I forgive you.” I hold in my tears, my pure joy that he’s here, that I can see him, that I can hear his laugh, that I can tell him this and I can not tell him this and he’ll know either way. He’ll know. “And I trust you.”

He breathes in deeply, the way he does when he’s thinking about his response.              

“Thank you.” He looks away. It’s hard for him, so I start to move forward to the table in the middle of the room as businesslike as possible, a flurry of empty words and gibberish plans forming at the back of my tongue.

But soon his hands are on my shoulders, turning me around, and I’m ready for him to slam his face into mine, which is Erik-speak for all which he can’t express in words, like I love you, thank you, be with me forever, fuck me senseless…well, maybe I made up those last parts but Erik-speak gives me liberty for my imagination to fill in and a man can dream, can’t he?

But Erik Lehnsherr, though not as much of a mystery as he wishes, is always full of surprises, and he’s pulling me into a warm hug, a genuine hug, a loving hug, and he says it, and he doesn’t even whisper it, bless his little, little, heart, and he says, “I love you, Charles Xavier.”

I press my grin into his shoulder so he feels it.

“I know, Erik Lehnsherr.”

A cry of despair from one of the televisions rips us from our love fest, probably to Erik’s relief, and I’m left with anxiety and fear again, but this time I have someone I trust by my side.

The final room is ostensibly simple.

A wooden table rests between us and the last door. I’m questioning whether we’re supposed to barricade the door or knock it down with the table when I finally spot a vial on the center of the table.

The room is silent except for Erik’s heavy breathing, his hand ruffling his hair with deep thought. I glance up for televisions, but there are none. No instruction, then. No countdown.

My stomach flips. There’s no countdown, I realize, because we don’t need one. Their lives are the only time constraint, the only incentive we need. We have a minute, two at most if they can hold their breath for a good long time. I faintly recall seeing an exceptionally young girl in there.               

I slowly turn to look at Erik and he shifts to look at me, and we exchange a heavy glance.

And while he thinks he’s enigmatic I could’ve told you he planned on throwing it back the second I spotted it. Sure enough, he leaps across the table, me diving into his side in admonishment as his long fingers swipe the vial off the table, pinning me beneath him with nothing other than his knees. I curse my small build and his undying strength as my cheek throbs against the cold metal floor.

“Don’t. Don’t, don’t say it, I know you’ve been dying to for ten years, don’t even—”

He slams his face next to mine, a wild grin grasping his cheekbones. “Sorry, Charlie!” Erik pops the cork out of the oddly archaic vile as he rolls off of me, the bottle at his lips.

“It’s probably poison!” I shout, grabbing his wrist and carefully trying to wrestle it from his grip without spilling it. He puts the stopper in it, stepping back.        
                “Obviously. But my life isn’t worth all five or six of theirs, or yours, and we just did the whole ‘I-love-you’ mushy thing so it doesn’t need to happen again. Let’s just get this over with.”

I nearly growl at him. “No, Erik, no. Let’s just talk it through, maybe we can…” I trail off. Maybe we can what?  
                “Professor Xavier, I wish as much as you that every situation could be outsmarted or out-witted or whatever it is you do, but that’s not the truth. We don’t have time.” He checks me one last time, then starts to tip his head back again. My chest is heavy with despair and it’s hard to breathe, my heart spinning quickly from pure happiness to utter despair, so close to having him back again to losing him entirely, nothing left to hate about him except the fact that he’s dead.

I want to collapse from the mere exhaustion of my wild emotions, my constant thought process, the general sensation of walking more than I’m used to. But I find myself desperate to find a solution, some way to stop Erik, to save him from himself, the one thing he always needed but that I could never do…

Chess, the game, now this…the first tested our wit, my arrogance, the game tested our trust…

I have mere seconds as even Erik, so quick to throw himself in the face of death, hesitates to throw back the poison and relent himself to the great unknown in which he will finally be equal to the human scum he so abhors.

The chess made me concede to his wit and the game was supposed to break our trust.

So I must trust him and myself, the way he trusted himself with his own intuition.

He thought like me, and now I must fight like him. I hate to do things the Erik way, more so as to not give him the satisfaction than the fact I despise violence, but I must do for him what he did for me back there.

I brace myself, take a deep breath, remember all that he taught me, and plant what I hope is a solid right hook into his face, careful to tug the vial out of his hand as he reels backward. From what I remember of the two times I’d taken Erik on—and lost—he’s quick to recover. I jam the stopper in the vial, set it on the table, and skid it to the other side as he reels back onto his feet, shocked.

It doesn’t take long. I’d seen him wrestle with the boys. He knows how to beat the shit out of someone without actually hurting them too bad, though black eyes became a badge of honor around the mansion. Oh, dear.

I’m questioning my own sanity when something slams into my chest and I’m back on the ground, him on top of me, knee on my chest and hand clasped carefully but firmly around my throat. I have to hurry for the sake of those kids, but when Erik gets angry he doesn’t think clearly.

My plan was to knee him in the crotch, but I selfishly elect to protect our future sexual endeavors and instead slap him on both ears simultaneously, disorienting the balance control center in the mind and allowing me to jab him in the side, throw him off, and leap to my feet in one clumsy fell swoop. I stagger to the table, leaping over and skidding to the vial.

I hold it in my hands and it’s much heavier than I imagined. Heavy with the threat of terminality. Of the end. Done.

I think of Hank, of Alex, Sean, Moira, Raven, everyone…I think of Erik. I think of him one last time in the way that he first wakes up in the morning and like most people, has a rare moment of unadulterated peace before the memories and anxieties of the past and present catch up to him and etch worry on the lines of his face, a moment in which he is at peace, with himself and with the world.

A sense of peace I so desperately cling to now. I hear him getting up, hear the watery shrieks of those beyond the door. I shut my eyes, find anger, then serenity, and throw the liquid back, hoping the last thing I ever taste isn’t disgusting.

My last thought before I black out is that it tastes sweet.

Except also a tinge of sour. And I don’t black out. As in, I don’t die.

Hysterical laughter bursts out of me and I pretend that there’s no chance that it’s a slow-working poison. Erik leaps across the table, ripping the vial out of my shaking hands, horror clenched on his face. “It’s okay,” I gasp. “I’m okay.” I want him to stop looking so broken. He grabs me, and shakes me, cursing me and pulling me into another tight hug.

Everything is a bit blurry but I know I’m just imagining it, my breathing more even, less jagged, the chill sweeping through me turning into appropriate heat as Erik clenches me tight. In my lethargy I look to my left, at the door, waiting for it to open. But it doesn’t.

I notice a familiar green panel glowing faintly beside the door. A panel for one of our hands, except a needle sticks out where the index finger goes.

“Erik,” I whisper, horrified. “It’s not poison. It’s a key.”

He stares at me and laughs with relief, but slows when he sees my horror, my words weighing heavily around us. That’s when he realizes, and we both realize it, and neither of us needs to say it. Only one of us is passing through that door. There’s no way Arcade would allow both of us to get out of this final room alive. It was the final test.

We weren’t choosing between who would die. We were choosing who would live.

                It was the final test, and I, Charles Xavier, have not failed, but I have failed the love of my life and thus do not deserve to pass.

                My heart only beats twice before the last of my Erik-strategy comes to fruition, and I act impulsively, emotionally, and confidently.

                I slam my lips to his, disgustingly, surely, and positively, shoving my tongue as far down his throat, choking up as much saliva as humanly, mutantly, possible, without vomiting at my own actions.

                It’s actually pretty difficult.

                Erik rears back first, smacking his lips and wiping off his tongue, shaking his head like he can physically throw off the most disgusting kiss he’s ever experienced.

                I give it a few seconds until he finally looks at me. “What in God’s name was that?”

                I muster a wink. He stares, jaw agape. I leap off the table, grab his hand, slam it onto the pad and prick his finger on the needle. He recoils, swearing in pain and confusion as the door opens, barely a crack, and I shove him wholeheartedly through, the door slamming almost immediately after, leaving me unable to slip in after him.

 I quickly swipe off his handprint and blood and position my own hand, my father’s words haunting me.

_“Charles, if there’s anything you learn about being a doctor, it’s this: always trust your intuition enough to test it yourself.”_

I take a deep breath, imagine the rare feel of his hand on my shoulder, and trust myself, pricking my finger on the needle and hoping I haven’t just sealed myself in my own grave. At least I’ve saved Erik, using his own strengths the way he used mine.

I shut my eyes, and the longest few seconds of my entire life pass before a small, insignificantly important click slices through the silence and my walls of despair. I leap to life, whooping in triumph as I propel myself forward on my legs, spry as ever, the door shutting behind me as Erik sweeps me into a hug in what I assume is an air lock.

“God, you genius, you horny bastard, how’d you even think to pass the serum on through a kiss?”

I grin at him. “I didn’t. I just really wanted to kiss you and it happened to work out really well. How was that kiss, by the way?”

He can barely get out what I know he’s going to say through his laughter. “Eh, a four.”  
                We crack up in hysterical laughter before I shove him forward into reality, the two of us gripping the wheel on the thick steel door, the only thing between us and what I hope aren’t corpses.

We take a deep breath as one unit, and I push, and he pulls.

Both in the same direction.

               

               


	10. Chapter 10

While I’d like to say that the two of us pried the door open as  result of pure fortitude and strength, or some ethereal sense of homosexual solidarity, all it took was a bit of a shift in the wheel before the power of water pressure sent us flying backward.

I really should have thought that one through.

I’m thrown back onto the floor, my head a mere inch from the thick metal wall, bracing myself up against it as the water pours in. It’s only once I start to feel the cool wall behind me do I realize Erik could have easily opened the door but pretended it required teamwork to open.

I let him win chess sometimes. I guess we’re even.

My insides twist when a body flows toward me, but I’m able to breathe when she hits my feet and immediately sits up to cough out a mouthful of water, gasping in breath.

I’m aware the water is starting to flood in quickly, and while it will even out between the two rooms, it will still rise to our waists and encumber our movements. I don’t know what Arcade has in mind now that we’ve won, but we must keep every advantage on our side.

I pull her gently to her feet, wiping sopping wet clumps of hair out of her mouth as she struggles to catch her breath. I take her head in my hands, trying to force her world to stabilize as it spins.       

“You’re going to be alright. I promise. You’re going to be alright. Keep breathing.”

She wiggles out of my grasp and gestures worriedly toward the other bodies and I grab her firmly and pull her back. “They’ll be alright, too. Let me go help them. Lean up against this wall, yeah, right there, I’ll be right back. Deep breaths.”

This whole non-telepathy thing is hard.

                I connect with her gaze but not her mind and the desire to latch onto it throbs at the back of my throat and there’s a moment where I stare at her and she stares at me and I wonder what she thinks about all this and what I think about all this and then suddenly I’m picking my powers over my legs and waiting for them to buckle but it can’t happen on command and then I realize she’s probably just freaked out about it all and I’m feeling creepy.

                I blink away the sudden whirlwind of thoughts. I guess that’s what you’d call a moment of truth.

                “Charles,” Erik calls. I turn to face him after ensuring the girl is stable against the wall, prepared for the continuing cascade of water. He’s struggling to pick up two unconscious kids out of the water. As I half-swim, half-walk my way over, he plops one of them over his shoulder and manages to wake the other one up, getting him to sling an arm around his back. I manage to drag the two remaining over to the wall, water up to our waists.

                For a moment we lean up against the metal wall, breathless as the water reaches equilibrium between the two rooms, finally ceasing with an eerie stagnancy. The air runs thick with anticipation. Erik continues to shake the mutants awake until all five of them tremble before us, shaking and automatically searching for signs of danger.

                Moments before I succumb to the urge for my knees to buckle the door behind us, the door to the room with the vial, opens with a small click and gives way to the slow current of water. Eventually it drains to our ankles and as the door nearly pulls off its hinges, the sign is clear.

                Erik and I exchange glances. For whatever reason, we are free to go. Free to live.

                We’ve won.

                While Erik’s angered expression tells me he decides to take it as a moment of pity and mercy I decide to take it as one of triumph. The next steps are a blur and as we work our way back, room for room, each door unlocks seamlessly until we’re lost in the maze and end up in the room we’d seen on our screens, the room where Arcade gazed down on us so foully. I’d expected a room full of nothing but cowardice, or perhaps mercy, or some ambiguous intention, and that’s how it rests now, any sign of previous psychopath residents gone.

                We remain silent as we pick our way back by memory, sore, exhausted, the others too shaken to share anything as they trust us blindly. Erik hazards a guess at a left turn and as we draw our way around the bend a blur of pasty white and then blue catches my eye.

                “Raven! Hank!” This time the happiness and relief pours out of me with no boundary, no ominous threat weighing over my pounding head. I sweep Raven into my arms, planting a kiss on her head before tugging in a reluctant Hank as well.

                Raven, always boundless with energy, immediately gestures over a more than disillusioned Logan, peppering us with a constant stream of questions while laughing over Logan’s blunders. Disgruntled, he shoves her away, muttering something about taking today’s events to his graves.

                Secrets seem to be the common theme, for when Erik and I explain briefly and then turn the questions back around on them, Hank and Raven exchange heavy glances, laden with something quite profound, and I don’t push further. Maybe another day.

                It’s enough to see that Hank reaches down and takes Raven’s hand with confidence, and she squeezes back, eyes glowing with a sense of security. I want to take Erik’s hand because I see in her what I want to see in him, but I let the moment go as he revels in Logan’s blatant embarrassment at the whole situation.

                “Alright, alright. Let’s move on, yeah?” I turn back to the five of them cowering behind us, still deciding whether to fight or run. I’m afraid of what they’re capable of when provoked, and I’m careful to stand between Logan and them, smiling wearily. “We’re going to help you back to my house, and we’ll clean you up. Then we’ll get you back home, or somewhere safe. Is that alright with you?”

                They look at each other and I wonder if they’d met before this horrific experience, if they’re friends, or have just bonded through the experience. After tacitly deciding on compliance, they turn back and manage wary nods.

                Good enough for now.

                “I’m Charles Xavier, and I’m a mutant, too. I read people’s minds,” I say, grinning. Their eyes widen. “Er, only with their consent. No worries. Er…” I’m starting to lose them. “This is Erik, and he can move metal. It’s, uh, it’s cool, trust me. This is Raven, who can morph into anyone she’s laid eyes on. And this is Hank, who can…” How do you phrase this? “Who can adopt animal-like qualities, such as incredible agility and strength.”

                Nailed it.

                “And this is Logan, who has…” Just say it. “Bone…claws? Yeah, and healing. It’s spectacular, really, you should—”

                “Charles,” Raven admonishes, laughing at the way I ramble when nervous. Her natural laughter seems to make them more comfortable. I let it go, smiling cordially.

                “Right, sorry. Crack on, then.” I spin as gracefully as possible on my heels as I can, reveling on the way they feel beneath me, sore but sound, and I lead the group ahead toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Except this time the light symbolizes life, not death.

                Me and my metaphors. Shameful, really.

***

“The theory of induction may sound incredibly inane at first but in fact is one of the more dogmatic principles I’ve encountered. In fact, you might be thinking that philosophy in general is incredibly stupid and, by extension, so am I for teaching you something quite gratuitous at a school for young mutants.”

I get plenty of nods corroborating the latter. I fail to suppress a grin.

“I get it. You’re wondering why I’m bothering, and why it’s been four weeks since school started and Professor Logan has already taught you how to beat each other up in the hallways, so why must we regress and learn philosophy in a literature class?” More nods.

“I’m not raising idiots, that’s why.” I get a few chuckles, and I smile down at my lap, tracing the outline of the book title.

“Of course, some things will always remain to be true, like that there will always be a possibility of some freak accident that renders infinity into the finite. I can insist there will always be gravity but there will also always be the chance a meteor will knock us out of or current universal position, throwing us into a black hole in which the rules of gravity are nothing we’ve ever seen before. But that’s why it’s important to treat everything with not cynicism but curiosity, to welcome change with open arms.”

I start to hurry up the next part out of the fear that I’m losing them, but most sit rapt with attention, a sensation I’m unaccustomed to. I try to slow down. “We have to treat ourselves like that. Maybe a month ago you were a freak, but now you’re something special. Maybe yesterday you made a mistake but today you can learn from it. Or maybe you were a freak and are still one now. Maybe John ate glue a month ago and still does today.”

Everyone cackles at the boy leaning back in his chair in the corner, snapping fire into his fingers and shooting me a challenging glare, trying not to blush. I wink at him and he smirks back.

“Which is why I personally think this book is bullshit.” I throw _The Great Gatsby_ onto my new desk in front of me, nearly knocking the nameplate that reads ‘Professor X’ off of it. I watch the room stir in discomfort.

“‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’” I stare out at them, trying to instill something that will probably slip in one ear and out the other, but it’s worth a try. People are always worth the try. Someone once taught me that and it’s time to pass the knowledge along.

“Now, who the narrator was including when he mentioned ‘we’ is unclear, but if he meant that the desire to give up and constantly revert to the past is inherent in human nature then I wholly disagree. The world will perpetually spin on with our without us and from my experience most people try to keep up.” I look down at my own legs and laugh at the irony. “I know that sounds ridiculous from a cranky old bastard in a wheelchair, but…”

I lock eyes with young Kitty in the front row, eyes bright with promise, bright with my promise to Logan about trying my best about this school, about the future.

“Use the past to make you stronger. Don’t let it…” I look out to the window, looking for the right word. A smile slowly catches on my lips, splitting into an uncontrollable grin. “Don’t let it, dare I say, cripple you.”

Half the room groans and half the room laughs and applauds and I watch carefully to see who to feed to the lions tonight and who to let live. “Class dismissed. Get out. Go have a life. And don’t you dare listen to anything Logan tells you, dear God.”

Laughter trails them out of the room until I’m left alone, mentally marking down my twelfth lesson in which I still smile uncontrollably to myself at the end.

I’m reveling in the way the laughter still resonates in the room when the fullness of the room extends a bit more and Erik draws up in front of me, leaning lazily on the desk in front of me, hair ruffled and sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and I’m amazed he can almost pull off the lazy-smartass-student look.

He purses his lips. “Will I be getting an A tonight, Professor?”

Oh, Christ. “No. Maybe a C, at most. If you’re really, really good.”

“And by good you mean really naughty, right?”

I answer him with a dramatic sigh, fighting back a grin that will no doubt satisfy him. I shuffle the large stack of papers on my desk to the side, groaning inwardly at the amount of organizing and scheduling I have to continue to get the school fully operational.

I slam back in my chair, running my fingers over my face, feeling exhausted. The five of us had virtually been working around the clock to make this place operational and while our efforts have paid off I want to sleep for a week straight.

“I feel like we could take on the apocalypse at this point, Charles Xavier,” Erik says, laughing. I peer through my fingers, shaking my head.

“What makes you say that? Did you get a heads-up?” He laughs harder. “Utter oblivion, Erik, you truly think we can handle that.”

It’s his turn to shake his head at me, his smile faltering a bit. “After everything, yeah. Jesus, you forgave me, of all people. After that I’d think anything is possible.”

“Really? Me forgiving you is far-fetched?” I think I’m fairly magnanimous. I try to look affronted. It works.

“No, no. I guess not. But you fell in love with me all over again, and after _that,_ anything is possible.” He grins again but it’s forced. He’s testing me.

“I never stopped loving you,” I say quietly.

It’s silent as he reaches forward and absently traces the title of the book, fingers following the very pattern of my own, and I wonder if he feels existentially connected to me in a way I feel connected to everyone. I often feel as alone as I do connected, because it’s often one way. But Erik smiles genuinely to himself, mouthing the title as he traces over it and he must be recalling something, maybe the first time he read it or the way I rant to him about how much I disagree with it at one in the morning when I’m going through it for the fifth time.

Now I test him. “Really, stopping the end of the world, plausible?”

“Especially the end of the world.” He looks up with a wicked grin that makes me want to launch myself across the desk and pin him under my magically functioning legs right in the middle of the classroom, bad student and naughty teacher roleplay fully welcomed. “Just the Spoonbender and Hot Wheels against the rest of the world.”

“Now that I wouldn’t mind on a T-shirt,” I accidentally whisper out loud. Oops.

“Why bother?” The smooth little shit at it again. “I’d just ask you to take it off, anyway.”

All I can manage is to roll my eyes.

“Aw, don’t give up on me now, Xavier.”

I lean across the desk and grab his roaming fingers in mine. “Lehnsherr, the day I give up on you, the day I stop rolling my eyes while simultaneously falling further in love with you is the day the world will truly fall. Then we can see about the apocalypse.”

There’s another beat of silence.

“Okay, that was a bit too gay and fluffy, even for you,” Erik says, beaming at me freely without any fear of retribution, any fear of fury from me.

                “Erik!” I burst with laughter. “Erik, you’re ruining the moment.” We both laugh.

                “You know, Charles, past evidence has shown that I usually do.”

                I don’t miss a second before lacing his fingers through mine, clenching hard and slipping into his mind, connected physically and mentally and somewhere perfectly in between.

                _But perhaps not everything that is induce will ever prove to be true again._

He smiles resolutely at me and I smile resolutely back.

                 “While we’re on clichés, Erik, remember: time heals all wounds. Maybe even back injuries. I think I can wiggle my toes.” We breathe in unison, waiting for the other to pull away first. Neither of us do. I whisper it again. “Time heals all wounds.”

                “Yeah, well, Prof, we all know that you’ve got all the time in the world.” We leap in our seats and turn to face Logan, who leans lazily against the door frame, a flustered Hank and Raven standing at his side.

                “Except, not right now. Jesus, let’s go.”

                Erik doesn’t miss a second and sweeps me up, curling me around his waist, looking to Logan facetiously, waiting his next order. Logan happily complies.

                “We’ve got a school to run.”

                 


End file.
